m 

UC-NRLF 


SB    313    517 


(f)  v^ 


BY  LEON  H.  VINCENT 


THE    BIBLIOTAPH    AND   OTHER 
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MOfFITT 

9- 


Copyright,  ip02,  by  Leon  H.  Vincent 
All  rights  reserved 

Published  December,  iqo2 


To 
FRANCIS   WILSON 

In  memory  of  days  and  nights  in  the  library  of 
*  The  Orchard* 


5^—  I      I       ,  „^w 

CONTENTS 

Introduction I 

Youth  and  Dramatic  Beginnings      .     .      1 1 

A  Provincial  Thespian 39 

-+  III  h- 
First  Pat  isian  Triumphs :  les  Precieuses 
ridicules,  l'Ecole  des  Maris,  and  les 
Facheux 65 

L'£cole  des  Femmes,  Tartuffe,  and  le 
Misanthrope     .......     95 


CONTENTS 

The  Actor  and  the  Man 143 

Les  Femmes  savantes,  1' Avare,  le  Bour- 
geois gentilhomme,  and  le  Malade 
imaginaire    .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .175 

-H  VII  h- 
Death,  Burial,  and  Posthumous  Fame   .   201 

Bibliographical  Note    .     .     .     .     .     .227 


MOLIERE 


-J^e 


s^. 


jLHE  play  was  over  and  the  audi- 
ence was  dispersing.  The  streets  adja- 
cent to  the  Petit-Bourbon  resounded 
with  laughter,  argument,  protestation. 
A  passer-by  who  mingled  with  the 
crowd  and  overheard  the  talk  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  note  how  va- 
ried and  discordant  the  opinions  were. 
These  people  had  just  witnessed  a  per- 
formance, by  the  '  Comediens  de  Mon- 


MOLlkRE 

sieur  frere  unique  du  roi,'  of  a  new  and 
clever  little  dramatic  satire.  It  was  evi- 
dent from  their  manner  that  the  piece, 
though  amusing  enough,  had  displayed 
some  unwonted  quality,  that  its  humors 
were  not  of  a  superficial  kind. 

A  number  of  spectators  confessed 
to  having  enjoyed  the  performance  in 
spite  of  themselves.  Others  had  been 
vastly  entertained  because  the  wit 
seemed  to  be  directed  at  people  they 
knew.  A  few  were  downright  angry, 
and  hinted  at  the  vengeance  it  was 
possible  to  wreak  upon  profane  satir- 
ists. Their  immediate  neighbors,  with 
more  reason  to  be  indignant  than 
themselves,  laughed  and  were  disposed 
to  take  it  all  in  good  part.  Whatever 
else  was  accomplished  the  play  had  un- 
questionably aroused  discussion.   The 


4*  mAsm  ■  ^v 

MOLIERE 

dramatist  had  held  the  mirror  up  to 
nature.  People  looked  into  the  glass 
and  were  so  astonished  that  they  be- 
gan at  once  to  protest  that  the  mirror 
was  distorted.  Little  as  they  were  grati- 
fied by  the  spectacle,  they  seemed  in 
no  danger  of  forgetting  what  manner 
of  men  they  were. 

This  fashionable  audience  was  ap- 
parently less  concerned  about  the  au- 
thorship of  the  play  than  about  the  play 
itself.  Not  half  of  them  knew,  or  cared 
to  know,  who  wrote  it.  The  bystander 
might  now  and  then  have  caught  the 
name  of  Moliere,  coupled  with  some 
phrase  expressive  of  admiration  for  this 
actor's  brilliant  performance  in  the  role 
of  Mascarille.  But  the  whole  affair 
was  of  far  less  importance  to  the  spec- 
tators at  the  Petit-Bourbon  than  to  us, 


MOLIERE 

who  look  back  upon  that  day  as  epoch- 
making  in  the  history  of  dramatic  lit- 
erature. The  players,  for  all  that  they 
bore  a  high-sounding  title,  were  not 
especially  noteworthy.  In  the  opinion 
of  Parisians  this  was  only  a  little  pro- 
vincial troupe,  newly  come  to  town 
within  a  year,  fortunate  in  having  taken 
the  fancy  of  the  young  king,  who  liked 
to  be  amused,  and  who  found  the  new 
players  able  to  do  and  say  very  laugh- 
able things.  Had  the  people  of  quality 
who  assisted  at  the  performance  that 
day  been  questioned  they  would  have 
explained  that  comic  actors,  though 
quite  diverting,  were  a  much  lower  or- 
der of  being  than  the  stately  kings  and 
queens  of  tragedy  who  chanted  the 
great  verses  of  Corneille,  for  example, 
at  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne. 


jm  mum  m*. 

M0L1ERE 

Among  the  spectators  thronging  the 
hall  of  the  Petit-Bourbon  that  Novem- 
ber afternoon  of  the  year  1659  was  Jean 
Chapelain,  of  the  Academie  francaise, 
he  who,  four  years  later,  was  to  figure 
conspicuously  among  the  King's  bene- 
ficiaries as  'the  greatest  French  poet 
that  ever  was  '  —  a  characterization 
which  he  accepted  with  unabashed  con- 
tent and  no  apparent  sense  of  incon- 
gruity. Gilles  Menage  was  also  pre- 
sent. The  two  scholars  met  when  the 
play  was  over.  Menage  took  Chape- 
lain by  the  hand  and  said  to  him, 
'Monsieur,  you  and  I  approved  all 
those  follies  which  have  just  been  criti- 
cised so  ingeniously  and  with  such 
good  sense;  but  now,  as  Saint  Remi 
said  to  Clovis,  we  shall  be  obliged  to 
burn  what  we  adored  and  adore  what 


lH  rrtrn  KW 

MOLlkRE 

we  burned/  Menage,  who  himself  re- 
cords the  incident,  says  that  it  turned 
out  as  he  predicted.  After  that  first 
performance  of  the  Precieuses  ridicules 
there  was  an  end  to  verbal  absurdities 
and  affected  style. 

Menage  is  suspected  of  having  made 
his  '  prediction '  after  the  event.  In 
any  case  it  is  a  question  whether  the 
reform  was  as  sudden  or  radical  as  he 
affirms.  The  revolt  from  the  jargon  of 
the  'ruelles'  had  begun  long  before 
1659.  But  up  rx/this  moment  no  wit 
had  ridiculed  the  coteries  with  such  fresh 
gayety  as  Moliere  displayed.  Other 
satirists  had  tried,  in  a  dull,  heavy  fash- 
ion, to  make  ■  preciosity '  absurd.  The 
chief  result  of  their  efforts  was  to  con- 
firm the  precieuses  in  their  folly  and 
to  make  the  spectators  yawn.   Moliere 

H-6-I- 


MOLIERE 

almost  convinced  the  precieuses  that 
it  was  worth  their  while  to  join  in  the 
laugh  at  their  own  expense. 

The  year  1659,  of  such  high  impor- 
tance in  Moliere's  life,  is  of  no  little 
significance  in  the  life  of  the  Hotel 
de  Rambouillet.  It  is  like  a  sign-post 
which  points  two  ways.  It  is  an  early 
date  in  the  history  of  the  great  drama- 
tist, and  a  late  date  in  the  history  of 
the  great  house.  The  fact  should  be 
kept  in  mind,  inasmuch  as  one  object 
of  this  series  of  brief  studies  is  to  show 
the  influence  of  polite  society  on  litera- 
ture. The  story  of  the  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet really  comes  to  an  end  with  the 
production  of  les  Pr'ecieuses  ridicules. 
The  aged  Marquise  herself  is  believed 
to  have  been  present  on  this  occasion 
and  to  have  joined  in  the  applause  at 
^7^ 


MOLIERE 

the  many  palpable  hits  made  in  the 
comedy.  She  was  a  woman  of  wit,  and 
it  is  wholly  unreasonable  to  suppose 
that  she  could  not  enjoy  a  satire  upon 
the  third  and  fourth  rate  salons,  the 
feeble  and  absurd  imitations  of  the  once 
famous,  and  justly  famous,  Blue  Room. 
So  far  as  Moliere  is  concerned,  this 
play  may  be  accounted  an  index  show- 
ing the  path  which  the  new  comedy  was 
to  take.  All  the  characteristics  of  the 
great  Frenchman's  art  are  epitomized 
in  this  lively  attack  upon  the  affecta- 
tions of  the  ruelles.  In  the  Precieuses 
ridicules  Moliere  completely  emanci- 
pated himself  from  the  fetters  of  the 
traditional  comedy  of  intrigue.  He 
took  his  subject  from  the  vivid  Present. 
He  learned  that  he  had  only  to  study 
Nature.  Above  all  he  became  mili- 
-h  8  -»- 


MOLIERE 

tant;  and  among  the  many  character- 
istics of  Moliere's  drama  none  is  more 
marked  than  its  militant  spirit.  The 
man  was  ever  a  fighter.  It  is  no  inad- 
equateaccount  of  his  Jife-which  cfc- 
g/M-ihpg  \\  pg  am  imrpmitting  war  against 
hypocrisy,  rTo  forget  this  would  be  to 
forget  Moliere's  own  words :  ■  It  is  my 
belief  that  in  the  work  in  which  I  find 
myself  engaged  I  can  do  nothing  bet- 
ter than  to  attack,  through  mocking 
portraiture,  the  vices  of  my  time^/He 
was  militant  at  the  outset  of  his  career 
as  a  dramatist,  and  during  the  fourteen 
years  of  his  Parisian  life,  a  period 
crowded  to  the  full  with  responsibili- 
ties and  labors  of  all  sorts,  he  was  never 
anything  else. 


&&  flj» 


p 

JL  ARIS  is  so  rich  in  historical  and 
literary  shrines  that  it  is  able  to  gratify 
the  pilgrim  with  the  bewildering  spec- 
tacle of  two  houses  in  which  Moliere 
was  certainly  born,  and  two  in  which 
he  unquestionably  died.  In  such  an 
embarrassment  of  riches  one  can 
hardly  be  too  conservative.  The  stu- 
dent learns  at  the  outset  that  about 
half  of  all  he  reads  and  hears  is  almost 
of  necessity  untrue. 

The  tablet  of  black  marble  placed 
-+  ii  -i- 


MOLlkRE 

on  the  front  of  No.  96  Rue  Saint- 
Honore,  about  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  bears  an  inscription  to  the  effect 
that  it  marks  the  site  of  the  house  in 
which  Moliere  was  born,  January  15, 
1622.  /The  admirer  will  be  fairly  safe 
in  paying  his  tribute  of  sentiment  at 
this  place.  For  if  it  is  difficult  to 
prove  that  the  poet  was  born  here,  it 
is  even  more  difficult  to  show  that  he 
must  have  been  born  somewhere  else. 
The  house  now  standing  at  the  cor- 
ner of  Rue  Saint-Honore  and  Rue  des 
Vieilles-Etuves  is  comparatively  mod- 
ern. The  original  edifice  of  Moliere's 
time  was  a  'picturesque  construction 
of  the  sixteenth  century,'  with  gables 
and  projecting  stories,  and  small 
arched  windows  of  leaded  glass.  At 
the  corner  of  the  house  was  a  carved 

-*  I2-H- 


MOLIERE 

wooden  post  of  the  sort  not  uncom- 
mon in  old  Paris.  This  'poteau  cor- 
nier' represented  the  trunk  of  an 
orange-tree,  up  which  swarmed  a 
group  of  young  monkeys  eager  for 
the  fruit,  while  an  old  monkey  waited 
below.  The  house  was  known  as  the 
4  pavilion  des  Singes '  from  this  deco- 
ration. The  eyes  of  the  future  poet 
must  often  have  rested  with  amused 
delight  upon  the  quaint  figures.  It  is 
believed  that  when  Moliere  invented 
a  coat  of  arms  for  himself  and  placed 
for  supports  on  either  side  the  shield 
a  monkey,  one  holding  a  mirror  and 
the  other  a  theatrical  mask,  he  had 
in  mind  the  grotesque  and  laughable 
carvings  on  the  old  house  in  Rue  Saint- 
Honore. 

The  family  to  which  Moliere  be- 
~n3^ 


M0L1ERE 

longed  came  originally  from  Beauvais. 
Jean  Poquelin,  a  tradesman  of  that 
place,  had  a  son  Jean  who  established 
himself  in  Paris  as  a  '  marchand  tapis- 
sier.'  He  married  Agnes  Mazuel,  a 
daughter  of  one  of  the  '  Violons  du 
Roi.'  They  had  ten  children,  the  eld- 
est of  whom,  Uean,  became  the  father  of 
the  dramatic  poet.  This  Jean  Poque- 
lin was  also  a  'marchand  tapissier.' 
His  wife  was  the  daughter  of  a  '  tapis- 
sier,' Louis  Cresse./They  were  mar- 
ried April  22,  i62i.|Their  first-born, 
known  to  all  the  world  as  Moliere, 
was  baptized  on  Saturday,  the  15th 
of  January,  1622/IThe  entry  in  the 
register  of  the  parish  of  Saint-Eustache 
calls  him  'Jean,  son  of  Jean  Pouguelin, 
upholsterer,  and  of  Marie  Crese,  his 
wife.'  The  name  of  the  mother  should 
-»•  14-1- 


MOLlkRE 

have  been  spelled  with  a  double  s. 
But  in  those  days  correct  spelling  was 
an  undiscovered  art.  The  orthography 
of  names  (if  orthography  be  the  right 
word),  was  altogether  in  a  «  fluid  and 
passing '  state.  The  name  borne  by 
Moliere's  father  is  found  in  the  civil 
records  spelled  in  eight  or  nine  differ- 
ent ways,  among  which  are  Pocque- 
lin,  Poclin,  and  Pauquelin.  *  The  true 
name  of  his  family  was  Poquelin.' 

Two  years  later  ahothet  child  of 
this  house  was  christened  Jean,  and 
therefore  the  elder  son  received  the 
name  of  Jean-Baptiste.  When  he 
went  upon  the  stage  Jean-Baptiste 
Poquelin  took  the  name  of  Moliere, 
for  reasons  satisfactory  to  himself  and 
inexplicable  to  other  people.  The 
change  could  hardly  have  been  made 


MOLIERE 

for  the  purpose  of  acquiring  distinc- 
tion, since  the  assumed  name  was  not 
only  rather  common  but  was  also 
borne  by  a  well-known  master  of  bal- 
let, Louis  de  Mollier  or  Moliere,  with 
whom  the  poet  was  often  confounded. 
However,  these  improvements  and 
changes  of  style  are  so  nearly  univer- 
sal in  the  theatrical  profession,  and  so 
frequent  in  the  literary,  as  to  require 
no  special  explanation  in  the  case  of 
the  great  French  dramatist. 

The  father  of  Moliere  held  the  posi- 
tion of  *  tapissier  valet  de  chambre '  to 
the  kingJ  It  was  a  hereditary  charge, 
and  was  considered  highly  profitable 
if  only  because  of  the  prestige  it  car- 
ried in  the  minds  of  people  who  like  a 
sofa  cushion  a  little  better  for  having 
been  made  by  royalty's  own  uphol- 
—1-16-1— 


MOLIERE 


sterer.  There  were  eight  of  these 
craftsmen,  each  of  whom  bore  the  title 
of  valet  de  chambre.  The  period  of 
their  service  was  three  months.  They 
received  three  hundred  livres  in  wage 
besides  gratuities  to  the  amount  of 
about  thirty-seven  livres  and  six  sous. 
{ Jean  Poquelin  was  a  respectable,  well- 
to-do,  and  influential  member  of  the 
middle  class.,  He  was  thought  to  be 
close-fisted  at  times,  but  he  lived  in 
something  like  luxury  and  took  no 
small  comfort  in  the  wealth  he  had 
acquired. 

(  The  mother  of  the  poet  was  a 
woman  of  taste  and  distinction.  If 
she  had  but  few  books  we  know  that 
the  few  included  a  Bible  and  a  Plu- 
tarch.) She  died  at  the  early  age  of 
thirty-one,  leaving  four  children ;  little 


MOLlkRE 

Jean-Baptiste  was  in  his  eleventh  year 
at  the  time  of  this  his  first  great  be- 
reavement. After  twelve  months  of 
widowerhood  the  father  married  again. 
Catherine  Fleurette,  the  second  wife, 
bore  her  husband  two  daughters  and 
then  died,  just  three  and  a  half  years 
after  her  marriage. 

We  are  warned  by  that  conserva- 
tive scholar  and  sound  critic,  Louis 
Moland,  not  to  accept  with  rash  en- 
thusiasm or  reject  with  disdain  the 
various  traditions  concerning  Moliere's 
youth  and  dramatic  career.  One  of 
these  traditions  says  that  the  boy's  ma- 
ternal grandfather,  Louis  Cresse,  used 
to  take  him  to  the  performances  at  the 
Hotel  de  Bourgogne,  and  therefore 
must  be  held  chiefly  responsible  for 
having  opened  Moliere's  eyes  to  the 


MOLIERE 

possibility  of  a  career  so  glorious  that 
the  profession  of  upholsterer  to  the 
king  seemed  commonplace  in  con- 
trast. To  assume  this  is,  as  Moland 
says,  to  assume  too  much.  Few  boys 
have  not  had  at  some  time  or  other  a 
passion  for  the  stage.  Moliere  doubt- 
less enjoyed  his  first  play-going  expe- 
riences in  the  company  of  his  grand- 
father, but  jit  seems  more  reasonable  to 
trace  his  deeper  interest  in  theatrical 
things  to  the  practical  experience  in 
dramatics  got  at  the  famous  Jesuit 
schooLknown  as  the  College  de  Cler- 
mont. I 

M 

Moliere  was  a  pupil  here  from 
October,  1636,  to  August,  1641.^  The 
school  was  large  and  fashionable, 
numbering  seventeen  hundred  day- 
pupils  and  three  hundred  boarders, 
-i- 19-1- 


j*  mum  ^ 

MOLIERE 

Among  the  names  enrolled  were  to  be 
found  representatives  of  such  great 
families  as  Conti,  Rohan,  Montmo- 
rency, Richelieu,  and  Crequi.  There 
was  a  faculty  of  three  hundred  mem- 
bers. The  instruction  combined  the 
best  offered  by  the  traditions  of  the 
past  with  an  unusual  amount  of  mod- 
ern science ;  it  has  been  remarked  with 
surprise  that  the  Jesuit  fathers  taught 
chemistry,  'or  what  passed  for  such/ 
They  paid  unusual  attention  to  what 
Lord  Chesterfield  in  his  day  called  ■  the 
graces/  In  this  school,  where  every 
recitation  was  rigorously  conducted  in 
Latin,  and  where  Latin  was  used  in 
the  dining-room  and  even  on  the  play- 
ground, no  little  care  was  bestowed 
upon  the  art  of  dancing.  At  certain 
times  in  the  year,  notably  when  the 

-»-20-»- 


MOLIERE 

general  distribution  of  prizes  took 
place,  plays  and  ballets  were  pro- 
duced. The  reverend  fathers  wrote 
many  of  these  little  pieces,  in  which 
the  more  gifted  pupils  displayed  their 
talents  both  elocutionary  and  terpsi- 
chorean.  To  the  influences  brought  to 
bear  upon  him  at  the  Jesuit  college 
Loiseleur  attributes  Moliere's  '  un- 
happy taste '  for  tragedy  and  his  con- 
summate skill  in  the  composition  of 
ballets. 

Among  his  fellow  pupils  young 
Poquelin  could  reckon  the  Prince  de 
Conti,  younger  brother  of  Conde  ;  also 
Hesnault,  Bernier,  and  Chapelle.  The 
three  last  mentioned  were  his  intimate 
friends.  If  Moliere  met  the  young 
prince  at  all  it  would  be  only  in  the 
classroom. 


MOLIERE 

Chapelle  was  a  natural  son  of  Luil- 
lier,  the  *  maitre  des  comptes,'  a  friend 
and  patron  of  Gassendi.  To  Luillier 
must  be  given  the  credit  of  having 
made  it  possible  for  these  four  lads, 
Hesnault,  Bernier,  Chapelle,  and  Jean- 
Baptiste  Poquelin,  to  enjoy  lessons 
from  Gassendi.  Cyrano  de  Bergerac 
also  became  a  member  of  the  circle. 
Grimarest  says  that  the  Gascon  forced 
himself  upon  the  little  party  of  youth- 
ful philosophers,  and  that  it  was  a 
problem  how  to  get  rid  of  him.  They 
solved  it  by  letting  him  remain.  Cy- 
rano may  have  used  adroit  and  insinu- 
ating ways  to  get  admitted,  but  he  had 
wit  enough  to  make  himself  agree- 
able and  amusing  when  once  of  the 
number. 

After  finishing  his  '  humanities ' 
-I- 22+- 


MOLIERE 

and  completing  such  studies  under 
■  Gassendi  as  his  father's  plans  allowed,,,, 
I  Moliere  went  to  Orleans  to  study  law.) 
No  small  pains  have  been  taken  to 
determine  the  extent  of  the  poet's 
legal  knowledge.  This  much  at  least 
is  clear,  that  when  Moliere  uses  the 
phraseology  of  law  he  not  only  uses  it 
exactly,  but  also  with  the  ease  and 
spontaneity  of  one  who  is  not  parad- 
ing knowledge  got  up  for  the  occa- 
sion. Some  emphasis  too  may  be  laid 
upon  the  fact  that  Moliere  never  satir- 
izes the  lawyers  as  he  does  the  physi- 
cians. Perhaps,  knowing  them  as  he 
did,  he  liked  and  respected  them ;  per- 
haps he  had  some  traces  of  sentiment 
about  a  profession  with  which  he  was 
at  one  time  closely  allied. 

It   is   amusing   to  find   that   after 


MOLlkRE 

graduating  from  the  College  de  Cler- 
mont and  taking  his  law  degree  at  the 
University  of  Orleans,  Moliere  was 
put  to  the  study  of  arithmetic  and 
penmanship.  This  was  a  special  train- 
ing for  a  mercantile  pursuit,  a  paral- 
lel to  which  could  easily  be  found  at 
the  present  day.  If  we  may  conclude 
that  the  study  of  law  was  looked 
upon  merely  as  part  of  a  liberal  edu- 
cation, it  is  safe  to  assume  that  the 
young  man  was  now  at  issue  with  his 
father  on  the  subject  of  his  career  in 
life.  The  question  was  whether  or 
not  he  should  be  allowed  to  give  up 
the  honorable  profession  of  hereditary 
upholsterer  to  the  king  for  the  disrep- 
utable business  of  play-acting.  The 
problem  is  constantly  recurring,  and 
has  every  time  to  be  solved  anew  on 
-+  24-1- 


MOLlkRE 

the  individual  merits  of  the  case.  No 
general  principle  can  be  found  to  gov- 
ern all  instances.  It  is  still  possible  to 
find  an  occasional  actor  who  would 
have  graced  the  upholstery  business. 
On  the  other  hand,  what  scholar  or 
critic  will  presume  fully  to  estimate  the 
loss  to  the  stage  and  to  literature  had 
not  Moliere  followed  his  bent  with  al- 
most blind  recklessness?  The  testi- 
mony of  friends  and  enemies  alike 
goes  to  show  that  his  passion  for  the 
theatre  in  all  its  forms  had  become  a 
frenzy.  There  is  no  cure  for  madness 
of  this  sort;  it  must  run  its  course. 
The  young  man  probably  scandalized 
his  father  by  the  ease  with  which  he 
put  aside  all  the  important  concerns 
of  life  to  run  after  players.)  Charles 
Dickens,  it  is  said,  had  so  profound  an 


MOLlkRE 

interest  in  the  stage  that  he  would 
witness  the  most  commonplace  act- 
ing patiently  and  sympathetically.  He 
derived  a  certain  pleasure  from  the 
efforts  of  these  people  —  a  pleasure 
totally  unmixed  with  cynicism.  In 
much  the  same  spirit  only  with  greater 
intensity  young  Moliere,  after  his  re- 
turn from  Orleans,  proceeded  to  slake 
his  thirst  for  things  dramatic.  He 
drank  in  greedily  whatever  Paris  had 
to  give.  "  Great  comedians  and  small, 
Italian  and  French,  tragic  and  comic, 
buffoons  and  jugglers,  he  followed  and 
saw  them  all.' 

Nor  was  he  content  to  be  a  mere 
spectator.  The  story  of  Moliere  and 
the  two  •  charlatans '  of  the  Pont-Neuf 
is  thought  to  have  a  foundation  in 
fact,  though  told  upon  the  authority 
-»•  26 -I- 


MOLIERE 

of  the  poet's  bitterest  enemy.  It  is 
found  in  a  satiric  comedy  entitled 
Elomire  hypocondre  ou  les  Medecins 
venges,  by  Le  Boulanger  de  Chalussay. 
The  name  Elomire  is  an  anagram  of 
Moliere.  The  author  of  the  play  was 
intimately  acquainted  with  many  facts 
of  Moliere's  life.  He  knew  so  much 
that  it  often  requires  the  most  delicate 
criticism  to  determine  the  line  between 
truth  and  fiction.  He  sneers  at  the 
poet  for  having  in  those  early  days  so 
completely  devoted  himself  to  what- 
ever in  the  remotest  way  touched 
upon  theatrical  affairs.  Moliere  is  ac- 
cused of  having  lost  his  head  to  the 
extent  of  applying  for  a  position  of 
assistant  to  the  sleight-of-hand  per- 
formers of  the  Pont-Neuf.     Moland 


27 


^5\  /S&teft  ^ 

MOLlkRE 

characterizes  this  story  as  '  an  absurd 
invention.' 

There  is  more  ground  for  believing 
the  tradition  that  Moliere  studied  the 
method  of  the  famous  Italian  mime 
known  to  the  public  under  the  name 
of  Scaramouche.  Vermeulen's  por- 
trait of  Scaramouche  has  under  it  a 
quatrain,  one  line  of  which  says,  — 
Ilfut  le  maitre  de  Moliere. 

The  author  of  the  play  of  fclomire  hy- 
pocondre  elaborates  this  tradition,  and 
pictures  Moliere  standing  before  the 
Italian  comedian  with  a  mirror  in  his 
hand  in  which  he  studies  the  varying 
expressions  of  his  own  face  as  he  tries 
to  master  the  lesson  of  Scaramouche. 
Now  he  personates  the  unhappy  or 
the  deceived  husband,  jealous,  raging 
at  heart.  4  There  is  no  movement, 
-+28^ 


MOLIERE 

posture,  or  grimace  which  this  great 
scholar  of  the  greatest  of  buffoons  does 
not  do,  over  and  over  again,  hundreds 
of  times.'  Livet's  edition  of  fclomire 
hypocondre  contains  a  facsimile  of  the 
rare  old  engraving  showing  Moliere, 
looking-glass  in  hand,  taking  his  les- 
son in  facial  expression.  A  story  told 
in  such  detail  and  with  such  liveliness 
of  manner  undoubtedly  has  some  basis 
in  truth. 

The  break  with  his  father  and  with 
all  the  traditions  of  his  family  came 
when  in  June,  1643,  Moliere  signed 
the  contract  drawn  up  by  ten  actors 
and  actresses  (including  three  mem- 
bers of  the  famous  Bejart  family)  for 
the  purpose  of  organizing  a  new  dra- 
matic company  to  be  known  as  the 
4  Illustre  Theatre.'  The  name  of  Jean- 
-+  29 -»- 


MOLIERE 

Baptiste  Poquelin  comes  third  on  the 
list;  he  was  then  twenty-three  years 
of  age.  The  seventh  name  is  that  of 
'Magdelaine  Bejart/  a  clever  young 
actress  with  whom  Moliere  was  known 
to  be  deeply  enamoured.  Tallemant 
des  Reaux  states  the  common  opinion 
of  her  merits  when  he  speaks  of  her 
as  a  gifted  comedienne,  and  records 
the  current  gossip  when  he  says  that 
1  a  young  fellow  by  the  name  of  Mo- 
liere left  the  benches  of  the  Sorbonne 
to  follow  her.'  Tallemant  is  in  error 
more  than  once,  as  when  he  speaks 
of  Moliere  at  the  Sorbonne ;  enough 
remains,  however,  to  show  that  love 
of  Madeleine  Be] art  as  well  as  love  of 
comedy  must  be  reckoned  among  the 
motives  which  prompted  Moliere  to 
embark  upon  a  theatrical  career.   The 


MOLIERE 

company  is  thought  to  have  been 
composed  at  first  of  amateurs,  who, 
after  playing  several  months  for  plea- 
sure, determined  to  make  a  profession 
of  what  had  hitherto  been  a  pastime.1 
The  audacity  and  light-heartedness 
of  youth  must  partly  account  for  this 
title  of  the  '  Illustre  Theatre.'  In  a 
contract  made  with  the  dancer,  Daniel 
Mallet,  occurs  for  the  first  time,  so  far 
as  we  know,  the  name  which  was  to  be- 
come world-famous  through  the  genius 
of  him  who  adopted  it  —  the  name  of 
Moliere.  Young  Poquelin  was  not 
merely  content  to  assume  a  more 
euphonious  cognomen  than  the  one 
borne  by  his  father  and  grandfather, 
but  he  must  needs  improve  upon  im- 

1  Larroumet :  La   Comedie  de  Moliere,  Paris, 
1887,  p.  77. 


MOLIERE 

provement  by  giving  that  name  the 
prefix  de.  The  new  company  of  play- 
ers was  illustrious,  and  of  its  members 
one,  at  least,  was  noble !  All  this  was 
innocently  done,  and  perhaps  wholly 
in  the  spirit  of  that  member  of  the 
Petit  Cenacle  described  by  Gautier 
who  turned  plain  Jean  into  Jehan  and 
got  indescribable  satisfaction  from  his 
Gothic  h.  Moreover,  there  are  many 
things  one  can  do  at  the  age  of  twen- 
ty-five for  which  he  will  have  no 
heart  after  he  is  forty. 
y  The  elder  Poquelin  by  no  means 
gave  over  his  efforts  to  persuade  the 
prodigal  son  to  relinquish  a  foolish 
undertaking.}  He  sent  Georges  Pinel, 
who  had  been  Moliere's  writing-mas- 
ter, to  argue  with  the  young  man  and 
if  possible  bring  him  to  hear  reason. 


MOLIERE 

Pinel  undertook  the  mission  with  en- 
thusiasm and  presented  his  patron's 
cause  with  eloquence.  Moliere's  elo- 
quence, however,  was  the  greater.  He 
not  only  was  not  persuaded,  but  he 
actually  induced  Pinel  to  leave  his 
pupils  and  join  the  new  dramatic  com- 
pany. The  susceptible  writing-master 
was  flattered  by  being  told  that  his 
stock  of  Latin  would  perfectly  fit  him 
to  play  the  role  of '  docteur,'  and  that 
he  would  find  acting  a  far  more  agree- 
able mode  of  life  than  keeping  a 
boarding  school.  Pinel's  name  ap- 
pears in  the  agreement  for  organizing 
the  « Illustre  Theatre.' 

The  fortunes  of  the  new  company 
were  almost  wholly  disastrous.  The 
comedians,  no  doubt,  played  their 
parts  with  vivacity  and  skill ;  the  pub- 


MOLIERE 

lie,  however,  was  not  greatly  moved. 
Auditors  came,  but  not  in  sufficient 
numbers,  and  salaries  cannot  be  paid 
in  appreciation.  The  'Illustre  Thea- 
tre '  tried  various  quarters  of  Paris 
only  to  meet  with  the  same  rebuff,  in 
each  new  locality.  They  were  like 
a  well-known  character  in  a  certain 
book  of  humor  in  that  they  were  ■  en- 
dowed with  the  very  genius  of  ill-luck.' 
Their  first  performances  were  given 
in  the  jeu  de  paume  (tennis-court) 
known  as  'Metayers/  from  Nich- 
olas and  Louis  Metayer,  its  first  pro- 
prietors. Six  months  later  they  moved 
to  jeu  de  paume  '  de  la  Croix-Noire  P 
near  Port  Saint-Paul.  It  was  thought 
that  they  might  thrive  among  the  wits 
and  amateurs  of  literature  who  fre- 
quented  this  quarter.    Disappointed 


MOLIERE 

here,  they  moved  again,  this  time  to 
6  Croix-Blanche '  in  the  Faubourg 
Saint-Germain;  'and  for  the  third 
time  they  found  only  the  desert.' 

For  Moliere  himself  the  next  four 
years  constituted  a  period  of  personal 
disappointment  and  mortification  in 
addition  to  the  misery  he  shared  with 
his  fellow-players.  Paraphrasing  a  fa- 
mous epigram :  To  make  a  failure  is 
at  any  time  a  sin ;  but  to  make  a  fail- 
ure in  the  presence  of  unsympathetic 
neighbors  and  critical  relatives  is  worse 
—  it  is  a  blunder.  A  young  man  who 
proposes  to  play  the  fool  should  go 
away  from  home  to  do  it.  Nothing 
illustrates  better  the  tenacity  of  Mo 
liere's  purpose  than  the  history  of  his 
connection  with  the  '  Illustre  Theatre.' 
He  made  intimate  acquaintance  with 


MOLIERE 

the  seamy  side  of  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury theatrical  life.  He  knew  the 
money-lenders  and  usurers,  the  pawn- 
brokers and  the  sheriffs.  At  one  time 
he  was  imprisoned  in  the  Chatelet 
for  a  debt  of  a  hundred  and  forty- 
three  livres  owed  to  Antoine  Fausser, 
dealer  in  candles.  There  were  yet 
other  debts  for  which  he  might  have 
suffered  detention  had  not  a  friend, 
Leonard  Aubry,  *  paveur  des  batiments 
du  roi,'  come  to  his  help.  Moliere's 
father  has  been  roundly  abused  for  not 
showing  himself  active  and  conspicu- 
ous in  backing  up  his  son  in  these 
theatrical  ventures.  Such  abuse  is 
both  superfluous  and  uncritical.  The 
doctrine  may  be  old-fashioned,  but 
not  necessarily  unsound,  that  fathers 
should  be  allowed  some  independ- 
-t.36.H- 


MOLIERE 

ence  of  judgment  and  action  even 
when  they  happen  to  be  the  fathers 
of  distinguished  men.  Twelve  years 
were  yet  to  elapse  before  Moliere 
should  have  fully  justified  his  choice 
of  a  profession.  Jean  Poquelin,  the 
upholsterer,  lived  to  see  his  eldest  son 
almost  at  the  height  of  his  contem- 
porary fame.  Yet  it  were  gratuitous 
to  assume  that  the  old  man  cared  to 
or  could  fully  appreciate  the  nature 
of  the  son's  triumph.  For  the  sake  of 
sturdy  human  nature  and  to  the  end 
that  examples  of  the  '  man  of  char- 
acter' may  exist  in  all  ages  and  in 
every  country,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
Jean  Poquelin  died  unreconciled  to 
is  son's  course. 

There  being  no  immediate  future 
for  the  *  Illustre  Theatre '   in   Paris, 


js\  zested  /s^ 

MOLl&RE 

save  a  future  made  up  of  poverty  and 
failure,  they  determined  to  go  into  the 
provincial  towns.  Where  dramatic 
entertainments  were  fewer  than  in  the 
metropolis  they  might  at  least  get  a 
hearing.  The  precise  moment  of  de- 
parture is  unknown ;  it  probably  oc- 
curred some  time  '  during  the  last 
months  of  1645  or  the  beginning  of 
1646/  Nor  is  it  certain  what  members 
of  the  original  company  united  with 
Madeleine  Bejart  and  Moliere  in  this 
new  venture.  For  the  next  twelve 
years  the  poet  led  the  nomadic  life  of 
a  provincial  Thespian.  With  all  its 
hardships  and  deprivations,  its  vulgar- 
ity and  ennui,  this  section  of  Moliere's 
history  is  to  be  accounted  of  highest 
importance  in  his  intellectual  and  ar- 
tistic development. 

^38- 


II 

T 

JlHE  most  superficial  acquaint- 
ance with  the  methods  of  biographers 
makes  clear  how  absolutely  essential 
it  is  that  the  lives  of  great  men  should 
'  fall  into  periods/  Imagine  the  blow 
to  the  orthodox  conception  of  bio- 
graphical criticism  if  we  were  not  al- 
lowed to  picture  a  great  dramatic  poet 
repeating  the  syllables  in  each  line  of 
verse  ■  to  ascertain  if  they  developed 
the  style  of  metre  it  was  his  duty  to 
posterity  to  be  using  at  that  special 
-*39-*- 


MOLIERE 

period  of  his  life.'  In  other  words,  the 
critics  must  have  ■  periods,'  if  they 
have  to  invent  them. 

It  is  a  relief  to  find  that  now  and 
then  these  divisions  actually  occur  in 
the  life  of  a  man  of  letters  quite  of 
their  own  accord.  The  mere  change 
of  locale  makes  the  years  of  Moliere's 
provincial  wanderings  stand  out  in 
marked  contrast  to  all  that  goes  before 
and  all  that  follows. 

/(There  fell  to  his  share  certain  re- 
sponsibilities of  which  he  had  hitherto 
known  but  little.  He  became  the  di- 
rector of  the  troupe,  if  not  at  once, 
certainly  very  soon  after  the  beginning 
of  the  provincial  tour.  He  rose  to  this 
position  by  his  gift  for  leadership. 
He  was  a  born  drill-master.!  It  rarely 
happens  that  men  with  the  faculty  for 
-»-40-»- 


MOLIERE 

control  do  not  find  something  upon 
which  to  exercise  their  powers;  and 
if  they  have  the  ability  to  control  in  a 
great  way  the  opportunity  is  sure  to 
arise.  The  doctrine  of  ■  mute  inglori- 
ous Miltons '  and  '  village  Hampdens ' 
is  a  very  pretty  one,  but  it  is  as  absurd 
as  it  is  poetical ;  your  real  Hampden 
does  not  find  the  4  village  tyrant '  a 
foeman  of  sufficient  importance. 
f  Moliere  was  not  only  an  actor  and 
a  manager,  but  he  became  a  writer./ 
This  might  have  happened  in  Paris 
quite  as  well  as  in  the  provinces,  but 
I  believe  the  pressure  of  necessity 
helped  to  awaken  his  inventive  pow- 
ers. \  In  the  city  he  could  have  pro- 
cured plays ;  in  the  country  it  was  not 
an  easy  matter,  and  he  must  make 
them.  Aside  from  that  always  power- 
-+41  +- 


0k  *&*  /^K, 

MOLlkRE 

ful  motive,  mere  gratification  of  the 
instinct  for  authorship,  [such  an  addi- 
tional incentive  as  the  positive  need 
to  have  a  new  play  at  a  given  time 
was  an  immense  stimulusj  We  can 
hardly  overestimate  its  force.  J 

The  provinces,  too,  were  an  excel- 
lent field  for  the  observer  of  human  na- 
ture. Society  was  immobile.  Strange 
characters  abounded.  Men  lived,  died, 
and  were  buried  in  the  towns  where 
they  were  born.  He  who  travelled  a 
hundred  miles  was  something  of  an 
adventurer,  and  was  held  in  becoming 
reverence  when  he  got  home.  Men 
who  had  been  to  Paris  took  marked 
precedence  over  their  fellow-citizens 
and  had  argument,  not  for  a  week  but 
for  the  rest  of  their  natural  days. 
Strangers  coming  to  these  lesser  towns 

-H42  4- 


0k  m&m  <%. 

MOLIERE 

and  villages  were  as  great  a  curiosity 
to  the  inhabitants  as  the  inhabitants 
were  to  them.  Even  to  a  youth  who 
had  been  brought  up  in  the  shadow 
of  the  Parisian  markets  '  where  wit 
had  flourished  from  time  immemorial,' 
who  knew  the  varied  life  of  the  Col- 
lege de  Clermont  and  the  halls  of  the 
University  of  Orleans,  and  who  had 
endured  the  buffets  which  Fortune 
bestows  upon  most  dramatic  tyros,  — 
even  to  such  a  youth  the  provinces 
must  have  seemed  rich  in  material  for 
the  study  of  human  nature. 

The  most  marked  contrast  of  all 
would  be  found  in  the  opening  up  of 
vast  tracts  of  unfilled  time.  The  busy 
hum  of  men  may  be  heard  in  market- 
towns  as  well  as  in  towered  cities,  but 
it  is  never  so  unremitting  in  the  one  as 


MOLIERE 

in  the  other.  '  What  do  you  do  with 
your  time  ?  '  inquires  the  cockney  of 
the  villager,  and  the  latter  cannot  give 
a  really  satisfactory  answer.  Busy  as 
he  was  and  exacting  as  were  his  re- 
sponsibilities, Moliere  must  have  had, 
now  and  then,  the  sense  of  a  larger 
leisure  than  he  had  hitherto  known. 
And  it  was  in  part  due  to  this,  I 
firmly  believe,  that  he  became  'so 
deep  contemplative.' 

The  early  history  of  Moliere's  pro- 
vincial campaigns  is  quite  obscure. 
When  Taschereau  published,  in  1828, 
the  second  edition  of  his  Histoire  de 
la  Vie  et  des  Ouvrages  de  Moliere,  he 
was  compelled  to  acknowledge  that 
'all  the  circumstances  of  Moliere's 
life  from  the  beginning  of  1646  up  to 
1653  were  a^most  entirely  unknown.' 


MOLIERE 

By  a  careful  study  of  the  civil  regis- 
ters in  various  parts  of  the  south 
and  east  of  France,  many  blanks  in 
our  information  have  been  supplied ; 
though  it  is  not  yet  possible  to  trace 
the  wanderings  of  the  company  step 
by  step.  However,  as  a  biographer 
has  happily  expressed  it,  while  we 
may  not  know  at  a  given  instant  just 
where  Moliere  and  his  people  are, 
we  may  be  sure  that  they  will  not  be 
long  out  of  sight. 

The  two  sorts  of  documents  which 
furnish  indisputable  proof  of  the  pre- 
sence of  the  company  in  a  given  place 
are  the  registers  in  which  were  in- 
scribed the  permission  of  the  munici- 
pal authorities  to  give  a  performance 
in  the  town,  and  the  4  actes  de  Petat 
civil'  which  contain   records  of  the 


moli£re 

baptism  of  such  children  as  were  born 
into  the  theatrical  profession.  If  we 
may  believe  the  records  these  domes- 
tic events  were  not  few.1 '  *  The  child 
was  baptized  where  it  was  born  and 
the  members  of  the  company  were 
godparents  or  witnesses.' 

There  is  an  ancient  tradition  to  the 
effect  that  when  Scarron  wrote  his  Ro- 
man comique  he  had  Moliere's  troupe 
in  mind.  The  very  place  and  the  ex- 
act time  of  the  meeting  between  the 
great  dramatist  and  the  famous  satirist 
have  been  indicated.  The  tradition 
enjoyed  a  long  life,  but  has  no  stand- 
ing at  the  present  day.  Scarron  hardly 
needed  a  particular  group  of  models 

1  Les  comediennes  de  la  troupe  etaient  d'une 
singuliere  fecondite.  —  Moland. 
-+46-1- 


MOLIERE 

from  which  to  paint  his  realistic  can- 
vas ;  nor  was  Moliere's  the  only  com- 
pany of  itinerant  players  to  be  met 
with  in  the  Seventeenth  Century.  It 
is  thought  that  when  Scarron  was 
about  composing  his  study  of  provin- 
cial Bohemia  the  troupe  in  which  our 
interest  centres  was  not  fully  organ- 
ized, or  at  least  that  it  had  not  ac- 
quired reputation  sufficient  to  make  it 
the  object  of  satire.  Moreover  Scar- 
ron's  picture  is  too  broad.  The  man- 
ners of  the  time  were  easy,  theatrical 
manners  included.  Le  Breton  says 
that  the  arrival  in  a  town  of  a  band 
of  strolling  players  was  a  signal  to 
the  inhabitants  to  look  out  for  their 
poultry-yards.  None  the  less  it  is  an 
unjustifiable  exaggeration  when  one 
proposes  to  identify  Moliere  and  his 
-+47-«- 


MOLIERE 

companies  with  a  vagabond  troupe 
such  as  Scarron  has  described.  Even 
if  Moliere  was  not  always — as  Mo- 
land  insists  that  he  was  —  allied  with 
la  haute  societe  of  his  time,  he  was  as 
far  as  possible  removed  from  the  other 
extreme.  The  pupil  of  Gassendi  may- 
be imagined  arriving  in  a  town  of 
South  France  •  with  one  foot  shod  and 
the  other  bare '  and  accompanied  by  a 
troupe  only  a  little  better  clad  than 
FalstafPs  regiment;  but  this  picture 
can  only  be  evoked  by  the  aid  of  an 
unbridled  imagination. 

After  turning  over  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  dry  parchments,  and  after  weigh- 
ing obscure  references  with  a  care  only 
equalled  by  that  of  a  goldsmith  in 
handling  precious  metals,  the  scholars 
have  determined  with  reasonable  accu- 
-1-48  -*- 


MOLIERE 

racy  the  course  taken  by  Moliere  and 
his  people. 

In  1647  ne  *s  believed  to  have 
visited  Toulouse,  Albi,  and  Carcas- 
sonne. In  April  of  the  following  year 
he  was  certainly  at  Nantes,  for  his 
name,  disguised  as  'Morlierre,'  is 
found  on  the  register  of  the  Hotel  de 
Ville.  He  is  described  as  '  one  of  the 
comedians  of  the  troupe  of  St.  Du- 
fresne.'  In  1649  ne  again  visited 
Toulouse,  going  thence  to  Montpellier 
and  Narbonne.  In  February,  1650, 
he  was  at  Agen  and  in  December  at 
Pezenas  during  the  session  of  the  Es- 
tates. In  1651  his  troupe  gave  per- 
formances at  Vienne,  and  in  1652  at 
Carcassonne. 

Beginning  with  the  year  1652  Lyon 
was  the  headquarters  of  the  company. 
^49+- 


MOLlkRE 

Moliere  and  his  people  would  make 
excursions  to  the  surrounding  towns 
and  villages.  These  trips  were  some- 
times of  long  duration,  lasting  perhaps 
a  half  year.  For  example,  in  1653 
Moliere  went  from  Lyon  to  Pezenas 
and  remained  during  the  entire  session 
of  the  Estates,  that  is,  from  March  17 
to  June  1.  In  the  latter  part  of  the 
same  year  he  was  at  la  Grange-des- 
Pres.  He  returned  to  Montpellier  in 
December,  1654.  After  a  long  stay 
in  Lyon  he  went  to  Avignon  and 
then  back  to  Pezenas.  From  Pezenas 
he  went  to  Narbonne  and  thence  to 
Beziers.  In  1657  ne  was  at  Lyon, 
Dijon,  Pezenas,  and  Avignon.  From 
Avignon  he  went  to  Grenoble  for  the 
Carnival,  thence  to  Rouen.  On  the 
24th  of  October,  1658,  they  reached 


MOLIERE 

Paris,  coming  directly  from  Rouen. 
This  in  brief  is  the  itinerary  of  one  of 
the  most  interesting  organizations  with 
which  dramatic  history  has  to  do. 

The  troupe  had  two  distinguished 
patrons.  From  1646  to  1652  they 
were  known  as  the  4  comediens  de  M. 
le  due  d'Epernon.'  The  Due  d'Eper- 
non  was  the  governor  of  Guyenne. 
From  a  personal  interest  in  Madeleine 
Bejart  this  nobleman  was  led  to  take 
her  companions  under  his  powerful 
protection. 

In  September  or  October,  1653, 
Moliere  offered  his  services  to  the 
Prince  de  Conti.  The  Prince  was 
making  merry  like  a  young  Sardana- 
palus,  filling  the  cup  of  life  to  the 
brim  during  those  days  of  bachelor- 
hood which  were  left  him.    His  resi- 


MOLIERE 

dence  was  the  Chateau  de  la  Grange- 
des-Pres  near  Pezenas.  Hither  came 
Moliere  and  his  troupe.  When  the 
Prince  presided,  as  representative  of 
the  King,  at  the  Estates  of  Languedoc, 
this  company  of  players  was  sum- 
moned to  furnish  entertainment.  The 
documents  show  how  increasingly  im- 
portant Moliere's  position  was  becom- 
ing. 

Larroumet  has  brought  out  very 
clearly  in  his  admirable  chapter  on 
Madeleine  Bejart  the  division  of  re- 
sponsibilities between  the  three  most 
important  members  of  the  company. 
Dufresne,  'an  old  stager,'  who  had 
conducted  a  theatrical  troupe  in  the 
provinces  before  now,  was  the  nomi- 
nal head.  \  Moliere  was  the  inspiring 
and  directing  force  in  all  that  apper- 
— »-  52  -*— 


MOLIERE 

tained  to  the  actual  production  of  the 
plays. )  Mademoiselle  Bejart  had  an 
eye  to  the  stage  settings  and  cos- 
tumes, and  kept  a  firm  hand  on  the 
department  of  finance.  That  Moliere 
was  a  man  of  affairs  admits  of  no 
doubt ;  but  Madeleine  Bejart,  who  was 
so  skilful  an  actress  that  she  could 
play  with  equal  success  the  part  of 
soubrette  or  of  a  princess  of  tragedy, 
was  a  '  man '  of  affairs  too.  Larroumet 
calls  her  the  steward  and  '  intendant ' 
of  the  association.  There  are  many 
proofs  of  the  '  vigilance  and  strength ' 
with  which  her  administration  was 
conducted. 

With  the  little  city  of  Pezenas 
Moliere's  name  is  intimately  associ- 
ated. He  passed  an  entire  winter 
here,  making  excursions  from  time  to 


MOLlkRE 

time  in  the  surrounding  country.  It 
was  rough-and-tumble  work,  veritable 
barn-storming.  The  towns  were  very 
small,  from  one  to  three  thousand  in- 
habitants ;  and  how  slender  the  ac- 
commodations must  have  been  either 
for  uncommercial  traveller  or  player 
may  be  readily  conceived  by  any  one 
who  has  tried  their  hospitality  in  the 
broad  light  of  the  present  civilization. 
In  1655  the  inns  were  unspeakably 
wretched.  Nor  was  the  pay  much 
better  than  the  fare.  It  is  evident  that 
a  village  of  a  few  hundred  families 
would  not  be  able  to  contribute  any 
great  sum  of  money.  The  company 
must  often  have  given  a  performance 
with  the  feeling  that  the  sacrifices  to 
be  made  for  art  are  limitless.  Loise- 
leur  adduces   as  direct  proof  of  the 


MOLIERE 

slenderness  of  the  receipts  the  fact  that 
the  cost  of  travel  was  often  levied 
upon  the  townspeople;  they  were 
compelled  to  furnish  horses  and  wag- 
ons to  convey  the  actors  and  their 
luggage  from  one  town  to  the  next. 
We  often  hear  of  soldiers  being 
quartered  upon  a  community;  it  is 
something  new  to  hear  of  a  theatrical 
troupe  being  billeted  on  its  audiences. 

A  requisition  of  this  kind  would 
need  to  be  made  at  the  instance  of 
some  powerful  nobleman  like  the 
Prince  de  Conti;  for  the  Prince  was 
famed  for  his  'cheerful  prodigality 
with  other  people's  money/ 

The  theatrical  accommodations 
were  of  the  most  primitive  sort,  and 
varied  in  poorness  with  the  character 
and  size  of  the  individual  towns.   A 


jm  atom  m, 

MOLIERE 

play-house  especially  constructed  and 
equipped  with  theatrical  appliances 
was  almost  unknown.  Even  in  Paris, 
the  '  Illustre  Theatre  '  had  played  in  a 
tennis-court;  to  be  sure,  these  courts 
were  supplied  with  a  stage  in  cases 
where  the  owner  could  depend  upon 
a  tolerably  regular  demand  for  such 
a  thing.  Happy  were  the  wandering 
tragedians  of  the  provinces  if  they 
could  find  a  'jeu  de  paume'  or  a  rid- 
ing-school which  might  readily  be  im- 
provised into  a  theatre.  In  the  smaller 
places  they  had  to  be  content  with  a 
barn  lighted  with  lanterns.  In  such 
a  theatre  the  hero  of  tragedy  might 
at  any  moment  find  his  periods  punc- 
tuated by  «  the  braying  of  an  ass  or 
the  bellowing  of  a  bull.'/ 


56 


MOLIERE 

Rigal *  has  shown  what  and  how 
many  were  the  tribulations  of  wander- 
ing theatrical  companies  in  the  early 
Seventeenth  Century.  His  chapter  re- 
fers to  a  time  just  before  the  classic 
period.  Not  all  the  sources  of  dis- 
comfort had  been  removed  when  Mo- 
liere  was  touring  the  south  of  France. 
Sometimes  the  Church  set  herself 
against  the  strollers  who  made  their 
appearance  at  an  inopportune  time; 
the  priests  went  so  far  as  to  threaten 
to  discontinue  Lenten  services  unless 
the  players  took  their  departure.  The 
death  of  a  distinguished  man  would 
keep  the  public  from  a  performance. 
Not  infrequently  the  authorities  re- 
fused a  license,  pleading  '  hard  times ' 

1  Eugene  Rigal  :   Le    Theatre  Fran$aisy  pp. 
8-26. 


MOLlRRE 

and  urging  the  necessity  of  protecting 
the  people  from  temptation.  Or  the 
license  was  granted  provided  the  com- 
pany would  agree  to  play  its  best 
piece  for  the  benefit  of  the  local  hos- 
pital. But  the  worst  misfortune  of  all, 
says  Rigal,  was  the  meeting  of  two 
theatrical  troupes  in  the  same  town. 
This  occasionally  happened  in  spite 
of  their  precautions. 

At  Pezenas  was  situated  the  shop 
of  the  barber  Gely,  whose  name  is 
often  linked  with  Moliere's.  A  bar- 
ber-shop filled  a  more  important  func- 
tion in  the  Seventeenth  Century  than 
in  the  Twentieth.  It  was  a  centre  for 
news,  for  political  discussion,  for  gos- 
sip. It  was  a  sort  of  club,  open  to  all, 
a  place  where  one  might  pleasantly 
beguile  many  a  moment  on  the  plea 


MOLIERE 

of  waiting  one's  turn.  The  barber 
himself  was  a  privileged  person,  often- 
times clever,  at  all  events  sure  to  be 
filled  with  modern  instances  if  not 
with  wise  saws.  Moliere,  during  his 
long  stay  in  Pezenas,  used  to  go  with 
great  regularity  to  Gely's  shop  and 
watch  the  queer  characters  who  con- 
gregated there,  hear  their  talk,  take 
mental  note  of  their  absurdities  and 
whims.  Like  '  Democritus  junior '  he 
made  himself  for  the  moment '  a  mere 
spectator  of  other  men's  fortunes  and 
adventures,  and  how  they  act  their 
parts.'  The  ancient  armchair  in  which 
he  used  to  sit  is  still  in  existence.  Its 
authenticity  seems  to  be  unusually 
well  established.  Whatever  form  of 
scepticism  may  seize  Pezenas,  in  com- 
mon with  the  rest  of  the  world,  the 
-+5< 


jk\  estate  ^^. 

MOLIRRE 

inhabitants  at  least  never  lose  their 
faith  in  the  genuineness  of  the  •  fau- 
teuil  de  Moliere.' 

In  1655  (some  biographers  put  the 
date  two  years  earlier)  Moliere  made 
his  beginning  as  a  dramatic  author 
with  rJELtourdi,  a  comedy  of  intrigue 
in  the  Italian  style,  an  imitation  in 
part  of  the  Innavertito  of  Barbieri.  It 
has  the  merit  of  originality,  not  be- 
cause of  the  ingenious  construction 
but  because  of  the  beauty  of  the  style. 
Victor  Hugo,  always  magnificent  in 
denunciation  or  in  praise,  declared 
that  Vfitourdi  was  the  best  written 
of  all  Moliere's  comedies.  Not  every 
critic  is  prepared  to  go  to  this  extreme 
of  eulogy.  Few  will  dissent  from  the 
opinion  that  these  earlier  comedies  of 
Moliere,  such  as  VfLtourdi,  represent 


MOLIERE 

perfectly  the    genius   of  the  French 
language. 

Moliere's  second  comedy,  le  D'epit 
amoureux,  was  given  at  Beziers  in 
1656.  The  troupe  had  been  sum- 
moned there  at  a  meeting  of  the  Es- 
tates, and  this  play  was  one  of  the 
novelties  with  which  that  honorable 
body  was  entertained.  Like  its  pre- 
decessor, the  D'epit  amoureux  is  taken 
from  the  Italian.  The  Interresse  of 
Secchi  furnished  many  of  the  motives. 
Mesnard  believes  that  the  piece  was 
composed  rapidly,  and  perhaps  with- 
out other  intention  at  first  than  to  give 
a  French  rendering  of  an  Italian  play. 
But  the  design  grew  under  Moliere's 
hands,  and  the  result  was  a  play  too 
original  to  admit  of  being  classed  as  a 
mere  transcription.  It  will  be  remem- 
-+6n- 


MOLIERE 


bered  perhaps  that  when  the  Comedie- 
Fran9aise  celebrated  Moliere's  birth- 
day during  the  siege  of  Paris  in  1871, 
the  director  selected  the  D'epit  amou- 
reux  as  one  of  two  plays  to  be  per- 
formed on  that  occasion.  An  im- 
mense audience  gathered  to  do  honor 
to  the  national  poet.  The  sparkle  and 
gaiety  of  the  piece  were  rendered 
more  striking  by  the  grim  accompani- 
ments of  war.  Cannon  muttered  and 
roared  in  the  distance,  and  shells  were 
bursting  in  the  streets. 

Vktourdi  and  the  D'epit  amoureux 
were  certainly  written  and  for  the 
first  time  produced  during  the  latter 
part  of  Moliere's  provincial  wander- 
ings. It  is  even  possible  that  a  more 
brilliant  work  than  either  of  these 
should  be  referred  to  the  same  period. 
-»- 62 -»- 


MOLIERE 

If,  as  Grimarest  affirms,  the  Precieuses 
ridicules  was  also  produced  in  the 
provinces  long  before  its  famous  de- 
but at  Paris,  the  fact  is  one  of  high 
interest.  Nothing  would  be  more  rea- 
sonable than  to  suppose  that  Moliere 
found  a  motive  for  his  lively  satire  in 
the  ridiculous  antics  of  the  country 
precieuses.  The  disease  of  preciosity 
had  excited  Chapelle's  mirth.  'Mo- 
liere was  quite  as  capable  as  Chapelle 
of  making  observations  upon  the 
strange  malady.' 


63^ 


in 


OLIERE'S  thoughts  must 
often  have  turned  towards  his  native 
place  during  these  years  of  work  and 
travel.  After  all,  he  was  a  Parisian; 
and  what  true  Parisian  looks  upon 
time  spent  in  the  provinces  as  other 
than  time  wasted  ?  He  may  grant, 
perhaps,  that  it  is  good  for  him  to 
undergo  the  discipline  of  an  enforced 
absence  from  the  beloved  city;  it 
sharpens  the  power  of  appreciation 
as  fasting  whets  the  appetite.   None 


MOLIERE 

the  less  will  he  insist  that  it  cannot  be 
called  living. 

Such  day-dreaming  as  Moliere  may- 
have  indulged  in  was  probably  not  of 
the  sentimental  type.  The  busy  life 
of  an  actor-manager  afforded  but  a 
minimum  of  time  for  idle  reverie  or 
nostalgia.  He  thought  of  Paris,  but 
he  thought  of  it  as  a  general  planning 
a  campaign  thinks  of  some  point  of 
strategical  importance.  4  Here,'  he  says 
to  himself,  ■  the  question  at  issue  will 
be  decided/  Every  month  of  work  in 
the  provinces  fitted  this  troupe  of  stroll- 
ers a  little  better  for  the  test  to  which 
they  were  presently  to  be  put.  It 
could  not  be  otherwise  with  a  man 
like  Moliere  at  the  head.  Moliere  had 
a  conscience  in  respect  to  his  art.  He 
knew  that  the  duty  lay  upon  him  and 


MOLIERE 

his  players  of  giving  the  best  that  was 
in  their  power,  whether  the  audience 
was  large  or  small,  distinguished  or 
common.  Impelled  by  such  a  motive 
and  guided  by  such  a  leader,  this  band 
of  comedians  steadily  grew  in  force 
and  skill  amid  conditions  which  others 
might  have  accounted  hard  or  even 
antagonistic. 

In  the  summer  of  1658  Moliere 
made  several  visits  to  Paris.  His  ob- 
ject was  to  secure  that  high  patronage 
without  which  launching  an  unknown 
dramatic  company  upon  the  sea  of 
Parisian  life  were  a  useless  and  heart- 
breaking venture./  Through  his  old 
protector,  the  Prince  de  Conti,  he  was 
recommended  to  Monsieur,  the  King's 
brother,  and  by  him  presented  to  the 
King.  On  the  24th  of  October  the 
-+  67-1- 


MOLIERE 

troupe  made  its  first  appearance  be- 
fore the  royal  family  in  the  4  salle  des 
gardes  '  of  the  old  Louvre,  which  had 
been  fitted  up  as  a  theatre  for  this  oc- 
casion. The  play  was  Corneille's  tra- 
gedy of  Nicomede.\\At  its  close  Mo- 
Here  came  forward.  Apologizing  in 
the  name  of  his  company  for  their 
rashness  in  attempting  to  entertain  the 
distinguished  audience  with  a  type  of 
performance  in  which  the  King's  own 
players  so  greatly  excelled,  —  an  allu- 
sion to  the  comedians  of  the  Hotel  de 
Bourgogne  who  were  present,  —  he 
begged  that  they  might  be  allowed 
to  offer  •  one  of  those  little  divertise- 
ments '  through  which  they  had  given 
some  pleasure  and  acquired  some 
repute  in  the  provinces.!  Permission 
being  granted,  the  lively  farce  of  the 
-+68+-  ' 


MOLIERE 

Docteur  amoureux  was  at  once  played. 
It  is  said  that  shouts  of  laughter  were 
raised  by  Moliere's  irresistible  imper- 
sonation of  the  chief  character.  J 

Having  proved  itself  worthy  of  the 
charge  the  company  received  the  cov- 
eted title  of  '  Troupe  de  Monsieur, 
frere  unique  du  roi.'  Besides  the 
honor  shared  in  common  with  his  fel- 
lows, each  player  was  granted  a  pen- 
sion of  three  hundred  livres.  The  re- 
ward was  less  splendid  than  it  seemed. 
A  pension  in  the  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury was  a  peculiar  thing,  as  the  Abbe 
Fabre  has  so  amusingly  shown.  It 
was  granted  with  a  smile,  paid  in  part 
and  that  grudgingly,  too  often  not 
paid  at  all.  Those  were  the  days  when 
an  indigent  man  of  letters  could  say 
to  an  almost  equally  indigent  actor: 
— »-  69  h— 


M0L1&RE 

4  What,  have  you  a  pension  ?  I,  too, 
have  one.  Let  us  condole  with  each 
other/ 

The  new  dramatic  favorites  were 
installed  in  the  ■  Salle  du  Petit-Bour- 
bon,' where  they  played  every  other 
day,  alternating  with  the  Italian  come- 
dians. The  head  of  the  latter  troupe 
was  the  famous  Scaramouche.  Mo- 
Here's  company  included  at  this  time 
the  following  men :  Joseph  and  Louis 
Bejart,  Duparc,  Dufresne,  and  DeBrie. 
The  actresses  were  the  Demoiselles 
Madeleine  Bejart,  Duparc,  DeBrie, 
and  Herve  (Genevieve  Bejart).  Three 
of  these  women  were  noted  for  their 
beauty;  all  were  more  or  less  human 
in  a  willingness  to  find  occasion  for 
professional  and  personal  jealousy. 

In  November  and  December  of  this 

-H-  70+- 


MOLIERE 

same  year  Moliere  produced  the  two 
comedies  which  had  been  so  warmly- 
received  in  Lyon  and  Montpellier, 
namely  VfLtourdi  and  the  Depit  amou- 
reux ;  their  success  at  the  Petit-Bour- 
bon was  no  less  complete  than  it 
had  been  in  the  provincial  towns. 
Moliere  was  now  on  the  eve  of  a  tri- 
umph much  greater  than  could  be 
hoped  for  through  the  inadequate 
resources  of  the  Italian  comedy  of 
intrigue.  He  was  to  begin  that  incom- 
parable series  of  studies  in  contempo- 
rary manners,  that  brilliant  and  flash- 
ing group  of  satires  on  contemporary 
foibles,  upon  which  his  fame  chiefly 
rests.  The  Moliere  of  the  Depit  amou- 
reux  or  of  VEtourdi  was  merely  a 
skilful  craftsman  in  a  type  of  work  no 
longer  new,  and  which  could  be  lifted 
-+  71  +- 


MOLI&RE 

to  no  higher  level  than  that  upon 
which  it  had  been  placed  long  before 
his  time.  (  The  Moliere  of  the  Pre- 
cieuses  ridicules  was  original,  a  creator,  j 

This  sparkling  comedy  was  first 
played  on  the  18th  of  November, 
1659.  The  to&c  alone  was  sufficient 
to  attract  >the  universal  attention  of 
play-goers.  Everybody  knew  what  a 
precieuse  was,  and  many  a  man  had 
already  fitted  Moliere's  adjective  to 
some  individual  precieuse  whom  he  . 
liked  least.  It  was  for  Moliere  him- 
self with  his  gaiety,  his  daring,  his 
flashing  dialogue,  his  overflowing  good 
humor,  to  make  the  word  *  precieuse  ? 
and  the  word  •  ridicule  *  so  insepa- 
rable that  it  has  taken  years  of  study 
and  many  hundred  pages  of  critical 
writing  to  convince  the  world  that  a 
-i- 72-1- 


MOLlkRE 

precieuse  would  be  anything  but  ab- 
surd. 

That  Moliere  intended  to  satirize 
the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  and  its 
famous  mistress  is  altogether  unlikely. 
A  lovable  and  gracious  lady  now  past 
sixty  years  of  age,  a  woman  of  irre- 
proachable character  and  noblest  an- 
cestry, a  loyal  wife  and  a  devoted 
mother,  a  generous  hostess  whose  draw- 
ing-rooms had  been  for  thirty-five  years 
the  centre  of  the  most  refined  society 
of  the  age  —  such  a  woman  now  in  her 
widowhood  and  burdened  by  many 
other  sorrows  neither  is  nor  can  be 
made  an  object  of  raillery  and  satire. 
To  suppose  Moliere  capable  of  such 
lack  of  taste  and  brutality  as  would  be 
evinced  by  his  singling  out  the  Mar- 
quise and  holding  her  up  to  public 


MOLlkRE 

laughter  is  to  do  him  injustice.  In 
depicting  Madelon  and  Cathos  di- 
viding their  time  between  washes  and 
cosmetics,  madrigals  and  the  'Carte 
de  Teridre,'  and  ignorant  of  the  world 
to  the  point  of  not  knowing  the  dif- 
ference between  a  valet  and  a  gentle- 
man so  long  as  the  valet  was  disguised 
in  the  master's  clothes,  Moliere  was 
manifestly  laughing  at  the  foolish  wo- 
men in  the  outermost  rim  of  polite 
society  whose  only  hope  of  distinction 
lay  in  aping  the  manners  and  talk  of 
great  ladies.  Such  women  had  not 
even  the  merit  of  being  first-hand 
imitations.  They  were  the  copies  of 
copies,  the  distorted  reflections  of 
other  reflections. 

The  great  days  of  the   Hotel  de 
Rambouillet  began  about  1630,  when 


0k  mtom  Hk 

MOLIERE 

Moliere  was  a  lad  of  eight.  This  pe- 
riod of  social  splendor  and  pre-emi- 
nence continued  at  the  outside  about 
twenty  years ;  some  scholars  make  it 
a  little  less,  putting  the  close  at  the 
time  of  Voiture's  death,  1648.  When 
Corneille,  the  most  popular  dramatic 
poet  of  the  hour,  famous  for  his  tra- 
gedies of  the  Cid,  Horace,  and  Cinna, 
was  introduced  to  the  mistress  of  the 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet,  about  the  year 
1640,  Moliere,  eighteen  years  of  age, 
had  finished  his  «  humanities '  and  was 
taking  lessons  in  philosophy  in  com- 
pany with  Chapelle.  When  the  boy- 
preacher,  Bossuet,  was  presented  to 
the  Marquise  in  1643  and  improvised 
his  famous  midnight  sermon,  Moliere, 
a  youth  of  twenty-one*  had  had  a  va- 
riety of  experiences.   He  had  been  for 


MOLlkRE 

some  months  at  Narbonne  in  attend- 
ance upon  the  king,  Louis  XIII,  in 
the  capacity  of  presumptive  tapissier 
valet-de-chambre ;  he  had  pursued  his 
law-studies  at  Orleans,  and  he  was 
on  the  eve  of  founding  the  «  Illustre 
Theatre/  After  the  failure  of  his  first 
dramatic  venture  he  went  to  the  pro- 
vinces, and  for  twelve  years  saw  little 
of  Parisian  life  save  in  brief  and  hur- 
ried visits  made  at  long  intervals. 
Therefore  he  could  know  nothing  of 
the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  from  first- 
hand report  during  the  period  when 
the  influence  of  that  great  house  was 
most  potent,  and  potent  chiefly  for 
good.  In  the  provincial  towns,  how- 
ever, Moliere  must  have  seen  many  a 
coquette  whose  affected  manners  and 
whose  speech  tricked  out  with  the 
— «-  76  -•— 


MOLIERE 

foolish  phrases  of  third-rate  salons  and 
ruelles  would  serve  as  a  model  for 
Madelon  or  Cathos  of  the  Precieuses 
ridicules. 

On  the  day  when  this  famous  com- 
edy was  first  given  'all  Hotel  de 
Rambouillet  was  present,'  and  ap- 
plauded with  an  enthusiasm  rather 
difficult  to  comprehend  if  it  regarded 
the  satire  as  directly  applicable  to  it- 
self. There  was  no  spectator  of  taste 
and  judgment  to  whom  the  winsome 
little  piece  was  not  a  revelation  of  new 
resources  in  dramatic  art.  The  air  of 
reality  given  to  the  whole  performance 
made  people  feel  as  if  they  were  be- 
holding an  actual  scene  from  con- 
temporary life.  Here  was  something 
fresh,  spontaneous,  irresistible.  Gri- 
marest  relates  that  one  day  at  a  per- 


MOLlkRE 

formance  of  the  Precieuses  ridicules,  an 
old  man  in  the  parterre  cried  out, 
1  Courage,  courage,  Moliere,  voila  la 
bonne  comedie ! '  Destructive  criti- 
cism has  set  aside  most  of  the  pictur- 
esque stories  collected  by  Moliere's 
first  biographer.  But  this  one  might 
easily  be  true.  The  incident  is  not 
out  of  reason,  and  the  old  man's  com- 
mendation neither  extravagant  nor 
extravagantly  expressed.  Here  was 
indeed  the  true  type  of  comedy  for 
which  the  public  had  been  waiting  so 
long.  An  attempt  on  the  part  of  some 
outraged  'alcoviste'  to  interdict  the 
play  only  served  to  inflame  public 
curiosity.  When  it  was  presented 
again  after  its  brief  suspension  the  in- 
terest was  so  great  that  the  price  of 


MOLlRRE 

admission  was    doubled;    this    rarely 
happened  at  the  Petit-Bourbon. 

LNot  unnaturally  Moliere  was 
arged  with  plagiarism ;  /the  world 
often  finds  it  difficult  or  impossible 
to  believe  that  the  man  most  likely 
to  have  written  a  certain  thing  was 
the  man  who  really  wrote  it.  He 
was  accused  of  having  robbed  the 
Abbe  de  Pure.  The  intellectual  riches 
of  the  Abbe  de  Pure  were  not  so 
abundant  that  he  could  be  robbed 
without  serious  inconvenience  to  him- 
self, a  fact  less  apparent  then  than  now. 
And  so  the  tale  was  gravely  told  of 
how  the  Precieuses  ridicules  was  taken 
from  a  piece  of  de  Pure's,  written 
in  Italian  and  played  in  1656.  Mo- 
liere himself  seems  not  to  have  thought 
the  ridiculous  charge  worth  the  trouble 


MOLI&RE 

of  a  denial.  The  true  answer  to  such 
an  accusation  consists  in  writing  yet 
another  play,  as  good  or  better,  and 
another  after  that.  It  was  easy  to  say 
that  Moliere  stole  the  idea  of  the  Pre- 
cieuses  ridicules,  but  what  was  to  be 
done  about  VEcole  des  Maris,  the  F&- 
cheux,  and  /  '£c ole  des  Femmes  ?  The 
most  gifted  robber,  if  he  be  really  a 
robber,  must  be  caught  at  last. 

It  was  thought  a  backward  step 
when  Moliere,  after  marking  out  a 
new  path  for  himself,  returned  to 
the  Italian  comedy  of  intrigue  and 
wrote  Sganarelle,  ou  le  Cocu  imaginaire 
( 1 660).  Taschereau  criticises  the  chief 
personage  of  this  play  as  too  unreal 
to  interest,  and  too  often  a  buffoon  to 
admit  of  his  being  strictly  a  comic 
character.  The  freshness  and  gaiety 
-h8o+- 


MOLIERE 

of  the  piece  attracted  a  crowd  of  spec- 
tators day  after  day  for  more  than 
forty  days.  Even  if  Moliere  lost 
ground  with  the  finer  judges  of  dra- 
matic literature,  he  at  least  held  his 
own  with  the  play-going  public.  They 
were  thoroughly  amused,  and  in  no 
mood  to  welcome  Don  Garcie  de  Na- 
varre, ou  le  Prince  jaloux,  a  comedie 
heroi'que,  which  was  produced  at  the 
Palais-Royal  in  February,  1661. 

\Don  Garcie  is  classed  among  the 
few  failures  of  this  great  dramatist 
The  play  has  been  abused  beyond 
reason.  Moliere  later  incorporated 
some  of  its  best  passages  in  the  Mi- 
santhrope, 'not  from  a  motive  of 
economy,  but  because  he  knew  they 
were  worthy  of  being  preserved.'  He 
did  not  yield  to  the  popular  verdict 


MOLlkRE 

without  a  struggle.  Don  Garcie  was 
played  before  the  King  in  1662,  and 
a  year  afterwards  before  the  Prince  de 
Conde,  then  again  before  the  King. 
Hoping  the  public  would  revise  its 
opinion  after  it  had  time  to  reflect 
upon  the  matter,  the  author  once 
more  put  the  piece  upon  the  boards 
at  the  Palais-Royal.  This  time  the 
verdict  was  unmistakable,  so  unmis- 
takable that  the  play  was  not  even 
printed  until  after  Moliere's  death. 
</  In  June,  1661,  Moliere  reasserted 
his  claim  to  originality  by  the  pro- 
duction of  the  famous  ■  Ecole  des 
Maris,  and  in  August  of  the  same 
year  the  '  court  comedy  {  Les  Facheux 
was  played  at  the  fetes  which  Fou- 
quet  gave  at  his  country-seat  of  Vaux 
in  honor  of  Louis  XIV.    In  the  first 


MOLlkRE 

of  these  two  studies  of  contemporary- 
manners  Moliere  returns  to  the  type 
of  comedy  in  which  he  had  once  be- 
fore shown  himself  an  absolute  mas- 
ter. The  Ecole  des  Maris  is  original 
in  precisely  the  way  in  which  the  Pr'e- 
cieuses  ridicules  is  original.  The  dra- 
matist borrows  an  idea  from  the  an- 
cients here  and  there.  Terence  in  his 
Adelphi  had  contrasted  two  types  of 
education,  the  genial  and  the  severe. 
But  what  gives  vitality  to  Moliere's 
piece  is  taken  from  the  vivid  present. 
The  scenes  throb  with  life.  The  char- 
acters appealed  at  once  to  every  spec- 
tator by  their  human  qualities. 

Two  brothers,  Ariste  and  Sganarelle, 

have  as  wards  two  sisters,  Leonor  and 

Isabelle.   Each  undertakes  the  care  of 

one  of  the  young  girls  and  brings  her 

-+83  4- 


MOLlkRE 

up  according  to  his  theory.  Ariste,  who 
is  genial,  open-handed,  a  man  of  the 
world  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 
says:  'Give  a  girl  some  liberty,  she 
will  be  none  the  worse  for  it/  Sga- 
narelle,  who  is  harsh  and  suspicious, 
says:  'By  no  means,  keep  a  girl  at 
home,  and  then  you  know  where  she 
is.'  Ariste  thinks  that  old  as  he  is  his 
ward  will  love  him  none  the  less  for 
having  seen  life.  Sganarelle  thinks 
that  if  his  ward  mends  his  linen  and 
knits  stockings  she  will  be  having 
excitement  enough;  if  she  rebels  he 
proposes  to  take  her  back  to  the 
country  to  live  with  the  cabbages  and 
turkeys.  Sganarelle  reaps  the  natural 
reward  of  undue  severity.  Isabelle 
says  to  herself  that  a  man  so  intoler- 
able as  a  guardian  will  be  a  hundred 


MOLlfiRE 

times  worse  as  a  husband.  She  is 
fairly  driven  to  the  arms  of  her  lover, 
Valere.  Isabelle's  ingenuity  in  mak- 
ing the  egoistic  guardian  act  as  a  go- 
between,  carry  letters,  repeat  messages, 
and  in  all  possible  ways  further  Va- 
lere's  suit,  is  intensely  comic. 

The  construction  of  the  Rcole  des 
Maris  is  ingenious ;  on  the  other  hand 
les  Facheux  has  almost  no  plot  what- 
ever. 

An  amiable  marquis,  firaste,  anx- 
ious for  a  meeting  with  his  inamorata, 
is  beset  by  bores,  each  of  whom  de- 
tains him  on  some  ridiculous  pretext. 
His  efforts  to  escape  furnish  the  audi- 
ence no  end  of  merriment.  Every  one 
who  witnesses  the  play  recalls  his  own 
experience  in  running  into  all  the 
people  whom  at  a  given  moment  he 


MOLlkRE 

least  cares  to  meet,  firaste  meets  Li- 
sandre,  who  is  music-mad,  and  insists 
on  humming  over  a  tune  he  has  just 
composed,  and  pacing  the  steps  of  a 
dance  to  accompany  it.  Once  rid  of 
this  bore  feraste  encounters  Alcandre, 
who  wants  his  services  as  second  in  a 
duel.  £raste  has  his  doubts  about 
duelling,  and  makes  his  escape  only  to 
fall  into  the  clutches  of  Alcippe,  who 
has  had  wonderful  ill  luck  at  a  game 
of  piquet  and  must  needs  go  into  all 
the  details.  Two  other  bores  insist 
that  Eraste  settle  a  dispute  for  them. 
Another  desires  to  read  a  petition  he 
has  drawn  up  urging  an  orthographi- 
cal reform  in  sign-boards  over  tavern 
doors.  The  next  bore  wants  to  make 
firaste's  fortune  for  him,  not  through 
copper  stocks,  but  by  an  invention 
-►86^ 


MOLIERE 

which  will  so  please  the  King  that  in- 
ventor and  intermediary  must  profit 
beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice. 

The  play  is  in  three  acts  and  the 
'facheux'  are  ten  in  number.  With 
characteristic  audacity  Moliere  ex- 
plained to  his  public  that  he  could 
easily  have  made  a  five  act  play,  so 
many  bores  are  there  both  at  court  and 
in  the  city.  The  value  of  the  piece  for 
readers  of  to-day  is  in  the  fidelity  of 
the  character  painting.  Eraste's  first 
monologue,  in  which  the  whole  race 
of  bores  is  anathematized,  gives  one 
a  better  idea  of  the  manners  of  the 
time  than  could  be  got  by  reading  a 
dozen  historical  essays. 

The  Facheux  is  often  cited  as  an 
illustration  of  Moliere's  power  of  rapid 
invention.    Only  fifteen  days  elapsed 


MOLlkRE 

between  the  giving  of  the  commission 
and  the  production  of  the  play.  In 
that  brief  time  the  piece  was  con- 
ceived, written,  learned,  and  put  into 
rehearsal.  Other  playwrights  have 
worked  with  equal  rapidity,  but  an 
examination  of  their  product  shows 
the  marks  of  haste  rather  than  of 
speed.  If  Moland  is  to  be  believed, 
the  Facheux  is  quite  free  from  the 
class  of  faults  usually  thought  to  be 
involved  in  hurried  composition. 
Faults  of  this  sort  would  be  apparent 
in  the  style.  In  this  case  fc  neither  pre- 
cision nor  clarity  is  wanting/  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  utterly  absurd  to  as- 
sume that  Moliere  had  not  in  mind 
some  latent  idea  which  to  be  brought 
out  needed  but  an  occasion,  like  that 
afforded  by  the  fetes  at  Vaux.    He 


MOLIERE 

may  even  have  had  a  ■  first  sketch  •  in 
his  portfolio.  According  to  de  Vize 
the  portfolio  contained  more  materi- 
als than  the  distinguished  comedian 
could  use.  •  Moliere  received  from 
people  of  quality  memoranda  of 
which  they  begged  him  to  avail  him- 
self. One  evening  after  the  play,'  says 
de  Vize,  \  I  saw  him  in  great  embar- 
rassment searching  everywhere  for  tab- 
lets in  order  to  write  down  what  was 
said  to  him  by  the  people  of  condi- 
tion who  gathered  about  him.'  De 
Vize's  narrative  would  lead  one  to 
suppose  that  each  of  these  fine  gentle- 
men had  some  friend  whom  he  wished 
to  see  held  up  to  ridicule  by  the  arch 
satirist  of  the  day.  Finally  these  me- 
moirs accumulated  to  such  an  extent 
that  Moliere  would  have  been  kept 
-+89-*. 


MOLliRE 

busy  with  them  all  his  life  had  it  not 
occurred  to  him  to  put  a  number  of 
the  sketches  into  one  piece.  •  He  then 
made  the  comedy  of  the  Fackeux,  the 
subject  of  which  is  as  bad  as  could  be 
imagined/  Indeed,  according  to  de 
Vize,  the  piece  does  not  deserve  to  be 
called  a  play ;  it  is  nothing  more  than 
4 a  series  of  detached  portraits'  all 
taken  from  these  '  memoirs '  furnished 
by  representatives  of  polite  society. 
The  critic  grants,  however,  that  each 
character  is  hit  off  so  admirably,  each 
portrait  is  so  naturally  drawn  and  so 
finely  finished,  that  Moliere  deserves 
great  praise. 

The  most  credible  point  in  all  this 

is  the  willingness  and  anxiety  on  the 

part  of  the  people  of  quality  to  hold 

one   another    up    to   ridicule.    Even 

-••go-*- 


w^v  mum  ffi* 

MOLIERE 

Louis  himself  did  not  fail  to  add  his 
quota  by  calling  Moliere's  attention  to 
M.  de  Soyecourt  the  hunter,  as  an 
4  original '  worthy  the  satirist's  atten- 
tion. De  Soyecourt  was  very  much 
of  a  gentleman,  but  when  he  began 
to  tell  stories  of  the  hunt  he  was  like 
the  Ancient  Mariner ;  he  had  his  will. 
The  listener's  attitude  may  not  have 
been  in  any  sense  that  of  a  two  years' 
child;  none  the  less  he  listened  be- 
cause it  was  impossible  to  get  away 
from  this  '  narrateur  impitoyable.'  In 
its  original  form  the  Facheux  con- 
tained no  scene  quite  comparable  to 
that  presenting  the  encounter  with 
Dorante.  Poor  £raste  meets  bores 
enough,  and  many  varieties  of  them, 
for  the  number  is  inexhaustible.  After 
the  first  performance  Louis  said  to 
— »-  91  •»- 


MOLIERE 

Moliere,  indicating  de  Soyecourt, 
4  Voila  un  grand  original  que  tu  n'as 
pas  encore  copie.'  The  hint  was  suf- 
ficient. Within  twenty-four  hours  the 
scene  where  Dorante  buttonholes  the 
unhappy  Eraste  was  written,  and  at 
the  second  performance  it  was  incor- 
porated in  the  play. 

To  any  one  interested  in  Fouquet's 
career  the  comedy  of  the  Facheux 
will  always  have  significance  apart 
from  its  value  as  dramatic  literature. 
It  was  almost  the  last  spectacle  upon 
which  the  eyes  of  this  unhappy  victim 
of  a  chance  turn  of  Fortune's  wheel 
rested.  No  mere  stage  pageant  can 
compare  in  splendor  with  the  '  chron- 
icle-history '  of  the  grandeur  and  fall 
of  Nicholas  Fouquet.  It  is  said  that 
before  the  King  accepted  his  hospi- 

-H-92-I- 


^5\  /5*tea  Asy 

MOLIERE 

tality  for  the  fetes  at  Vaux,  the  surin- 
tendant's  ruin  had  been  decreed,  and 
that  only  the  entreaties  of  the  queen- 
mother  prevented  an  immediate  arrest. 
The  King's  jealousy  because  of  Fou- 
quet's  display  of  wealth  and  power 
was  alone  sufficient  to  bring  about 
his  downfall.  Yet  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  that  sharp  note  of  personal 
antagonism  would  have  been  intro- 
duced had  not  the  King  learned  that 
Mademoiselle  de  Valliere  had  been 
singled  out  for  such  questionable 
honors  as  Fouquet  chose  to  bestow 
upon  beautiful  women.  When  Fou- 
quet discovered  that  his  rival  was 
none  other  than  Louis  himself,  he  had 
the  rash  courage  to  congratulate  the 
girl  upon  her  conquest.  Overwhelmed 
with  confusion,  she  appealed  to  her 


MOLIERE 

protector.  The  monarch's  anger  was 
great,  and  on  September  5  the  power- 
ful minister  of  finance  was  placed 
under  arrest. 

These  events  followed  so  hard  one 
upon  another  that  it  is  believed  Mo- 
liere  was  compelled  to  forego  the  no 
doubt  splendid  compensation  which 
the  minister  had  promised.  And  if 
Moliere  went  unpaid,  so  must  a  myriad 
of  less  important  people  who  had  been 
summoned  to  contribute  to  the  splen- 
dor of  Fouquet's  entertainment.  A 
man  of  the  surintendant's  position  was 
like  a  prince.  He  could  not  exactly 
be  said  to  hold  lives  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand,  yet  when  he  was  ruined, 
misery  and  want  came  to  hundreds  of 
his  dependents  and  to  not  a  few  of  his 
friends. 


IV 


N  the  26th  of  December,  1662, 
the  famous  play  entitled  I'Ecole  des 
Femmes  was  produced  at  the  Theatre 
du  Palais-Royal.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  Tartuffe,  no  work  by  the  great 
dramatist  aroused  such  irritation  and 
awakened  such  jealousy.)  It  is  diffi- 
cult fully  to  understand  the  grounds 
of  the  antagonism.  Perhaps  old  time 
play-goers  took  their  diversion  with  a 
degree  of  severity  unknown  to  us.  A 
play  was  an  affair  of  importance  in 


MOLlkRE 

the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  seems  to  have  mattered 
very  much  what  a  man  like  Moliere 
put  into  his  dramas ;  just  as  at  the  pre- 
sent day,  when  the  author  of  Adam- 
zad  and  the  White  Man's  Burden  pub- 
lishes a  new  poem,  the  journalistic 
dovecotes  are  fluttered  for  weeks  af- 
terward. For  whatever  else  was  said 
of  him,  Moliere  was  never  charged 
with  lack  of  directness,  force,  wit,  and 
the  power  of  satire.  People  heard  his 
latest  piece  and  always  found  some- 
thing in  it  to  excite  discussion.  With 
his  marked  personality  and  strong 
views,  it  was  inevitable  that  he  should 
antagonize  half  of  his  auditors.  With 
his  habit  of  close  observation,  his  skill 
in  grasping  the  salient  features  in  in- 
dividual character,  he  seemed  often  to 
-+96-1- 


MOLIERE 

be  descending  to  personal  satire  when 
perhaps  he  meant  nothing  of  the  kind. 
People  insisted  upon  recognizing 
themselves.  Then  they  went  away  to 
proclaim  loudly  that  they  had  been 
abused. 

The  fccole  des  Femmes  is  a  continu- 
ation of  the  thesis  laid  down  in  the 
Ecole  des  Maris.  It  might  be  called 
a  second  part.  The  same  characters 
do  not  appear,  but  the  situations  and 
a  number  of  the  ideas  are  repeated 
with  the  emphasis  laid  in  new  places. 
Moliere  puts  a  most  interesting  per- 
son on  the  stage,  namely,  a  man  of 
the  world  who  holds  the  doctrine  that 
the  only  way  to  get  a  satisfactory  wife 
is  to  train  one  for  one's  self.  Such  a 
character  must  be  of  necessity  both 
amusing  and  pathetic.  Arnolphe's 
-+97  +- 


r*  Trtrn  ^ 

MOLI&RE 

theory  of  how  a  young  woman  should 
be  educated  is  very  simple.  Let  her 
be  brought  up  in  such  ignorance  of 
the  ways  of  the  world  that  she  won't 
know  enough  to  go  wrong.  Make  a 
fool  of  her  if  necessary;  what  matter, 
so  one  preserve  one's  own  good  name  ! 
Arnolphe,  who,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, is  a  monomaniac  on  the  ques- 
tion suggested  by  the  '  word  of  fear, '  * 
never  loses  an  opportunity  to  rail  at 
married  men  for  their  complaisance, 
or  their  stupidity.  But  he  proposes 
to  profit  by  their  misfortunes.  He 
takes  the  beautiful  Agnes  from  her 
peasant  mother,  immures  her  within 
four  walls,  puts  trusty  servants  in 
charge,    and,    at    frequent    intervals, 

1  The  song  in  Love' s  Labor  's  Lost,  Act  V, 
scene  2. 

^98^ 


moliMre 

visits  her  under  an  assumed  name 
for  the  purpose  of  instructing  her  in 
the  duties  of  wifely  obedience.  Few 
scenes  are  more  amusing  than  that  in 
which  Arnolphe  explains  to  his  young 
protegee  how  great  an  honor  he  will 
confer  in  making  her  his  wife ;  nay, 
more  than  that,  how  godlike  is  the 
condescension  of  any  man  in  stoop- 
ing to  marry  a  mere  woman.  Agnes 
accepts  this  with  adorable  patience. 
She  is  already  in  love,  but  not  with 
her  protector.  Horace,  the  son  of 
Arnolphe's  friend  Oronte,  has  seen 
this  naive  beauty  and  become  enam- 
oured of  her.  His  ardent  wooing 
and  the  girl's  demure  response  are  in 
Moliere's  most  charming  vein.  Un- 
conscious that  Arnolphe  is  the  guar- 
dian of  Agnes,  Horace  tells  him  the 
-+99+- 


0*  <«retoft  (9k 

MOLIERE 

whole  story,  thus  putting  him  on  his 
guard.  The  scenes  in  which  the 
horrified,  middle-aged  egoist  listens 
against  his  will  to  the  young  man's 
enthusiastic  outpourings,  are  strikingly 
vivacious  and  humorous.  It  is  of 
course  impossible  to  keep  the  lovers 
apart.  Agnes  follows  Horace  as 
trustfully  as  the  Princess  in  the  Day- 
Dream.  And  then,  perfectly  to  meet 
that  prejudice  against  an  alliance  be- 
tween people  of  breeding  and  the 
lower  classes,  Agnes  is  found  to  be 
no  peasant's  daughter,  but  a  lady  her- 
self, by  birth  as  well  as  by  instinct. 
The  Ecole  des  Femmes  appeared  just 
ten  months  after  Moliere's  marriage 
with  young  Armande  Bejart. 

The  critics  have  read  into  the  play 
not     a   few    autobiographical     facts, 
-i-  ioo  •»- 


MOLIERE 

They  have  reason  to  do  so,  for  the  par- 
allel between  the  history  of  this  pair 
and  that  of  Moliere  and  Armande  is 
close  at  times.  The  great  comedian 
was  not  an  Arnolphe,  and  the  bril- 
liant, fascinating  little  actress  with 
eyes  smaller  than  eyes  should  be  to 
be  beautiful,  and  a  mouth  that  was  a 
trifle  large,  though  it  could  not  have 
been  more  seductive,  —  this  piquant 
being,  an  embodiment  of  bewildering 
charm  and  wayward  grace,  was  not  in 
any  sense  the  original  of  Agnes.  Yet 
the  relation  between  Arnolphe  and 
Agnes  suggests  one  phase  of  the  rela- 
tion between  the  poet  and  his  young 
wife.  It  is  possible  that  Moliere  may 
have  reflected  more  times  than  once, 
as  he  watched  the  course  of  his  own 
passion,  how  foolish  in  general  is  the 
**  ioi  -i- 


MOLIERE 

man  of  forty  who  imagines  he  can 
win  and  hold  the  love  of  an  eighteen- 
year-old  girl. 

The  attacks  upon  the  £,cole  des 
Femmes  prompted  its  author  to  make 
a  counter  attack  in  the  Critique  de 
FEcole  des  Femmes.  He  brings  upon 
the  stage  a  group  of  people  discussing 
his  own  play.  A  precieuse  prude 
and  a  foolish  marquis  are  offended  be- 
cause of  the  piece,  the  one  by  its  gross- 
ness,  the  other  by  its  lack  of  wit.  The 
marquis  needs  no  further  proof  of  the 
soundness  of  his  position  than  the  fact 
that  the  parterre  goes  into  shouts  of 
laughter  over  the  performance.  How 
can  that  fail  to  be  bad  which  amuses 
the  parterre  8  Uranie,  Elise,  and  Do- 
rante  defend  the  author,  and  ridicule 
the   prevailing  craze   for  stilted  lan- 

-+  102  •«- 


MOLI&RE 

guage  and  affected  niceness.  They 
are  for  good  sense,  and  they  incline 
to  the  belief  that  plain  people  have 
more  of  this  commodity  than  by  right 
belongs  to  them,  since  marquises  and 
precieuses  are  so  conspicuously  lack- 
ing in  it. 

The  wit  is  at  times  superlatively 
mordant.  One  must  marvel  at  Molie- 
re's  courage.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand, 
audiences  are  pretty  evenly  balanced, 
and  there  is  a  ■  bottom  of  good  sense ' 
in  human  nature  which  makes  the  ap- 
plause come  at  the  right  point.  An 
audience  as  an  audience  is  morally 
sound,  whatever  it  may  be  taken  indi- 
vidual by  individual.  Moliere,  to  be 
sure,  had  the  King  on  his  side ;  and 
Moliere  with  Louis  XIV  was  a  ma- 
jority. But  even  then,  there  remains 
^103-^ 


MOLlkRE 

a  large  residuum  of  courage,  for  which 
the  dramatist  must  have  credit.  Louis 
could  not  spend  his  time  protecting  his 
favorite  at  every  point,  and  there  were 
men  of  sufficient  power  in  France  to 
make  Moliere  uncomfortable.  More- 
over, kings  are  notoriously  fickle,  and 
if  the  monarch's  fancy  should  veer  to 
another  quarter,  the  quondam  favorite 
might  be  regarded  as  in  a  worse  case 
than  before.  Moliere  seems  not  to 
have  disturbed  himself  with  idle  spec- 
ulations. He  had  his  work  to  do,  his 
mission  as  a  satirist  to  fulfil,  and  he 
went  about  the  task  with  a  minimum 
of  anxiety  for  immediate  or  ultimate 
consequences. 

The  merry  war  by  no  means  came 
to  an  end  with  the  production  of  the 
Critique.     Having  received  insulting 
-+ 104  •»- 


MOLIERE 

treatment  at  the  hands  of  a  certain 
nobleman  who  thought  he  had  been 
attacked  in  the  play,  Moliere  appealed  ^ ' 
to  the  King.  The  monarch  gave  the 
poet  permission  to  lampoon  his  ene- 
mies to  the  top  of  his  bent.  Moliere 
made  use  of  the  privilege  •  in  a 
manner  truly  Aristophanic.'  The  Im- 
promptu de  Versailles  was  a  last  and 
brilliant  assault  in  this  particular  cam- 
paign against  precieuses,  foppish  mar- 
quises, and  the  rival  performers  of 
the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne.  As  a  docu- 
ment the  Impromptu  is  of  inestimable 
value.  Moliere  brings  all  his  people 
upon  the  stage,  each  in  his  own  person. 
We  enjoy  the  always  coveted  privi- 
lege of  fc  going  behind  the  scenes.' 
We  see  the  great  actor-manager  sur- 
rounded by  his  company.  Nor  does 
■"*•  105  *? 


MOLlkRE 

he  spare  them  in  the  general  distribu- 
tion of  caustic  criticism.  '  Ah !  les 
etranges  animaux  a  conduire  que  des 
comediens!'  he  exclaims. 

In  1664  he  produced  le  Mariage 
force",  la  Princesse  d'Elide,  and  the 
first  three  acts  of  Tartuffe.  i  The  Ma- 
riage forc'e,  a  comedie-ballet,  is  one  of 
the  many  pieces  which  Moliere  wrote 
less  to  please  himself  than  to  please  the 
King.  '  By  ministering  to  the  mon- 
arch's passion  for  fetes  and  spectacles, 
the  poet  obtained  for  himself  the 
privilege  of  writing  Tartuffe  and  the 
Misanthrope.'  \  Critics  have  seen  fit  to 
lament  that  Moliere  should  have  been 
compelled  to  waste,  upon  ballets  and 
farces,  precious  time  and  still  more 
precious  powers,  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  given  to  the  'haute 
-»•  106  *= 


MOLIERE 

comedie.'  The  attitude  of  the  critics 
is  not  surprising.  It  is  idle,  how- 
ever, to  worry  because  men  who  have 
worked  successfully  in  a  certain  envi- 
ronment did  not  have  more  time  and 
more  favorable  circumstances.  The 
implication  is  that  under  other  con- 
ditions the  geniuses  would  have  pro- 
duced in  larger  measure  that  type  of 
literature  which  critics  justly  admire. 
Such  a  result  is  by  no  means  certain. 
A  deal  of  creative  energy  is  bound 
to  be  wasted  in  one  way  or  another. 
Who  knows  whether  the  repression 
did  not  ultimately  act  as  a  stimulating 
force  or  motive,  and  whether  Moliere 
did  not  work  with  greater  energy 
at  Tartuffe,  the  Misanthrope,  and  the 
Femmes  savantes  because  he  was  com- 
pelled to  write  ballets  in  which  Louis 
-i-  107  •«- 


MOLlkRE 

could  display  the  grace  of  his  manner 
and  the  splendor  of  his  costume. 

The  young  King  was  now  twenty- 
six,  and  eager  for  pleasure.  The  fash- 
ionable world  took  immense  delight  in 
the  ballet.  The  entertainment  differed 
much  from  the  type  of  performance 
usually  associated  with  the  word  at  the 
present  time.  The  dances  were  for 
the  most  part  stately,  and  in  court 
ballets  a  high  decorum  reigned.  •  So- 
ciety *  not  only  witnessed  these  spec- 
tacles but  took  part  in  them.  For 
example,  when  le  Mariage  force  was 
given,  Louis  himself  appeared  i  in  the 
costume  of  an  Egyptian.'  There  were 
eight  4  entrees  de  ballet/  Among  the 
dancers  were  many  representatives  of 
the  nobility.  This  performance  at  the 
court  in  January  was  '  only  a  prelude 
-+  io8-»- 


MOLIERE 

to  the  brilliant  follies '  which  were  to 
take  place  at  Versailles  in  May  of  that 
same  year. 

Certain  ideas  and  situations  in  the 
Manage  force  appear  to  have  been 
suggested  to  Moliere  by  his  study 
of  Rabelais.  The  piece  is  a  commen- 
tary on  that  state  of  affairs  which  will 
permit  a  young  girl  to  welcome  mar- 
riage with  a  man  who,  besides  being 
a  brutal  sensualist,  is  enough  older 
than  herself  to  be  her  father,  simply 
because  marriage  means  freedom.  The 
play  has  a  cynical  quality  by  no  means 
agreeable,  though  it  may  be  that  this 
tones  down  and  is  partially  lost  in  the 
broad  comedy  effects  when  the  play 
is  played.  There  are  some  liberties 
of  expression  which  drive  the  critics 
into  apologizing  for  Moliere.  English 


MOLlkRE 

critics  need  hardly  feel  called  upon 
to  attack  the  Frenchman  for  a  lack  of 
delicacy  if  they  stopped  to  reflect  that 
Moliere  was  contemporary  of  the  re- 
spectable John  Dryden.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  anything  to  match  for 
grossness  certain  passages  in  the  Wild 
Gallant  and  the  Spanish  Friar. 

The  Princesse  a1' Elide  was  composed 
for  the  fetes  which  were  held  at 
Versailles  in  May,  1664.  Ostensibly 
given  in  honor  of  the  two  queens, 
Anne  of  Austria  and  Marie-Therese, 
they  were  really  intended  for  the  grat- 
ification of  Mademoiselle  de  La  Val- 
liere.  The  plan  of  the  celebration 
was  drawn  up  by  the  Due  de  Saint- 
Aignan,  who  took  his  idea  from  Ari- 
osto.  In  the  sixth  and  seventh  cantos 
of  the  Orlando  furioso  is  the  story  of 

-H  IIO-«- 


MOLIERE 

Roger's  visit  to  Alcine  in  the  en- 
chanted isle.  So  the  entertainments 
during  the  first  three  days  of  the  fes- 
tival were  known  as  the  Plaisirs  de 
Vile  enchant  ee.  One  of  these  days  was 
given  to  Moliere's  Princesse  d' Elide. 
The  piece  was  composed  in  great 
haste,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  fact 
that  it  begins  in  verse  and  ends  in 
prose.  Moliere  had  not  time  to  com- 
plete it  according  to  his  original  plan. 
The  story  was  taken  from  the  Spanish 
dramatist,  Moreto. 

In  the  festivities  and  ceremonies 
which  were  held  out  of  doors,  the 
King  played  the  part  of  Roger. 
The  description  of  the  triumphal  en- 
try reads  like  the  programme  of  the 
grand  march  around  the  arena  of 
some  'stupendous  and  unparalleled 
-•-  in  •*- 


MOLlBRE 

aggregation  ■  of  wonders  belonging 
to  a  three-ring  circus.  There  were 
Barnums  in  those  days.  It  is  easy 
to  laugh  at  this  childish  passion  for 
color,  pomp,  and  display ;  but  the 
affair  was  too  important  to  be  dis- 
missed with  a  laugh.  The  magnifi- 
cence was  real.  The  costumes  were 
the  most  beautiful  and  costly  that 
could  be  devised  by  unlimited  ex- 
penditure of  money  and  inventive 
power.  The  actors  in  the  pageant 
were  a  real  king,  real  queens,  real  no- 
blemen, real  ladies  of  quality.  The 
congratulatory  poems  and  the  plays 
were  the  work  of  real  poets,  a  Bense- 
rade  and  a  Moliere.  A  •  float,'  as  it 
would  be  called  now,  represented 
Apollo  seated  on  a  throne  with  the 
Four  Ages  at  his  feet.   On  either  side 

i*  II2-J- 


MOLIERE 

of  his  chariot  marched  the  Twelve 
Hours  and  the  Signs  of  the  Zodiac, 
costumed  *  as  the  poets  represent  them/ 
After  the  recitatives  the  'course  de 
bague'  took  place.  This  was  the 
riding  with  lance  for  the  ring,  a  form 
of  amusement  which  displayed  much 
of  the  old  time  spirit  of  the  tourna- 
ment with  a  minimum  of  danger.  A 
collation  was  served  at  night  by  the 
light  of  flambeaux,  and  the  Signs  of 
the  Zodiac  and  the  Hours  danced 
'  one  of  the  most  beautiful  entrees  de 
ballet  ever  seen.' 

On  the  second  day,  Moliere's  co- 
rn edie  galante,  la  Princesse  d' Elide, 
was  presented.  The  author  played  the 
part  of  Moron.  Armande  Bejart  won 
such  a  triumph  in  the  role  of  the  prin- 
cess that  her  pretty  head  was  turned 
-+113-^ 


MOLIERE 

by  it,  so  tradition  says.  The  pleasures 
of  the  enchanted  isle  lasted  for  a  week. 
Moliere  was  the  favorite  entertainer. 
His  Facheux  was  played  on  the  even- 
ing of  the  fifth  day.  On  the  sixth, 
the  first  three  acts  of  Tartuffe  were 
given,  at  the  King's  request;  and  on 
the  seventh  day  there  was  a  perform- 
ance of  le  Mariage  forc'e. 

The  biographers  of  Moliere  account 
the  moment  of  the  production  of  Tar- 
tuffe as  '  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
dates  in  the  annals  of  our  dramatic 
literature.'  The  poet  had  never  been 
without  courage,  but  in  Tartuffe,  dar- 
ing was  carried  to  the  point  of  bra- 
vado. It  may  be  said  that  the  antag- 
onism aroused  by  this  piece  found 
expression  in  one  way  or  another  from 
that  moment  up  to  the  day  of  Mo- 
-h  114-*- 


MOLlkRE 

Here's  death  and  for  many  years  after 
his  death. 

Without  doubt  a  large  part  of  the 
hostility  to  Tartuffe  was  not  in  the 
least  excited  by  the  moral  aspect  of 
the  question.  It  was  a  play  by  Mo- 
liere,  and  that  was  enough.  Any  play 
of  his  would  have  met  with  the  same 
reception.  His  professed  enemies  were 
predisposed  to  frown  upon  anything 
he  might  do.  The  student  of  biogra- 
phy is  under  no  obligation  to  account 
for  those  antagonisms  which  appear  to 
be  stirred  up  by  men  of  marked  indi- 
viduality for  no  other  reason  than  the 
sufficient  one  that  dulness  is  envious 
of  genius. 

Two  sorts  of  enemies  were  real  and 
powerful.  The  first  class  consisted  of 
the  Tartuff es  themselves  —  men  who 
-»•  115  •»- 


MOLIERE 

make  a  cloak  of  religion  to  hide  their 
true  nature.  When  Moliere  tore  away 
the  sanctimonious  mask  behind  which 
was  concealed  a  vicious  face,  he 
aroused  all  hypocrites  to  the  pitch  of 
malignant  anger.  They  lifted  up  their 
voices  and  cried  *  Blasphemer ! '  accus- 
ing Moliere  of  injuring  the  cause  of 
religion.  The  poet  was  singled  out 
for  opprobrium  such  as  the  extreme 
Puritans  heaped  upon  Christopher 
Marlowe.  The  instances  are  not  par- 
allel, but  the  abuse  was  very  like. 
There  was  an  earnest  cry  in  Moliere's 
case  for  some  one  in  authority  who 
should '  put  a  hook  into  the  nostrils  of 
this  barking  dog.' 

The  lamentations  of  the  Tartuffes 
were  mingled  with,  and  not  always  to 
be  distinguished  from,  the  sincere  ex- 


MOLliRE 

pressions  of  regret  which  fell  from  the 
lips  of  those  who  held  the  view  that 
religion  must  never  be  involved  in  a 
jest,  even  when  the  jest  was  directed 
towards  spurious  devotionalists.  The 
danger  was  too  great.  Who  was  able 
to  distinguish  ?  Who  could  say  with 
infallible  accuracy  which  was  the  false 
and  which  the  true  ?  After  all,  might 
not  the  man  who  seemed  a  hypo- 
crite be  more  nearly  genuine  than  we 
know *?  The  marks  which  distinguish 
spurious  from  true  devotion  are  not 
easily  found  in  every  case.  The  atti- 
tude of  these  critics  is  perfectly  under- 
stood when  we  bear  in  mind  the  case 
of  Swift  and  the  Tale  of  a  Tub.  Swift's 
satire  was  directed  against  Romanists 
and  Presbyterians  in  behalf  of  the  Es- 
tablished Church.  Devout  churchmen, 


MOLIERE 

however,  felt  that  the  cause  of  religion 
as  a  whole  was  made  ridiculous,  that 
such  scandalous  freedom  did  more 
harm  than  good.  And  in  the  same 
spirit  critics  of  Moliere,  who  were  ani- 
mated by  no  particular  hostility  toward 
the  man,  asked  themselves  whether 
the  attack  upon  false  devotion  was 
not  likely  to  be  interpreted  as  a  satire 
upon  all  religious  profession.  They 
believed  that  it  was  so  interpreted, 
and  hence  their  opposition. 

Then  began  that  long  struggle  for 
the  removal  of  the  interdiction.  The 
play  could  not  be  given  to  the  public, 
but  apparently  no  other  ban  was  laid 
upon  it.  Moliere  gave  readings  of 
Tartuffe  to  select  audiences.  The  con- 
flict of  opinion  was  so  violent  that 
curiosity  was  very  great;  an  oppor- 
-hi8h- 


MOLIERE 

tunity  to  hear  the  author  read  his  own 
play  was  eagerly  sought  for.  '  It  was 
the  most  attractive  sort  of  entertain- 
ment that  could  be  devised  for  people 
of  quality/ 

The  dispute  over  Tartuffe  was  in- 
flamed by  the  great  contemporary 
theological  quarrel.  It  was  said  that 
in  one  of  the  scenes  the  author  made 
mock  of  the  Jesuits.  The  Jesuits  on 
their  part  were  very  sure  that  Moliere 
had  the  Jansenists  in  mind ;  Tartuffe 
was  in  its  way  a  reply  to  the  Provin- 
cial Letters.  All,  however,  managed 
to  be  offended  alike.  The  case  of 
Tartuffe  was  not  unlike  that  of  the 
valetudinarian  in  the  play  quoted  by 
Erasmus;  one  physician  affirmed,  an- 
other denied,  yet  another  thought  the 
matter  should  be  taken  under  consid- 
-+  ii9«»- 


MOLlkRE 

e ration,  but  all  agreed  that  the  patient 
was  in  a  very  bad  way. 

In  addition  to  the  readings,  there 
were  private  performances  of  Tartuffe. 
The  King  visited  his  brother  at  Vil- 
lers-Cotterets,  the  last  week  of  Septem- 
ber, 1664,  when  three  acts  of  Tartuffe 
were  played  for  his  diversion.  One 
month  later,  the  entire  comedy  was 
given  at  the  chateau  of  the  Prince 
de  Conde.  The  suppression,  therefore, 
was  only  partial,  and  was  perhaps 
intended  to  be  no  more.  The  mon- 
arch's frown  was  official  rather  than 
actual.  That  Louis  himself  could  not 
fully  understand  the  grounds  of  the 
public  disapproval  would  seem  to 
be  clear  from  the  following  anecdote. 
The  King  asked  a  certain  'great 
prince '  (probably  Conde),  why  it 
-»•  120  •«- 


MOLlkRE 

was  that  the  zealots  who  were  shocked 
by  Tartuffe  made  no  outcry  over  the 
play  of  Scaramouche  ermite.  The  great 
prince  is  said  to  have  replied  some- 
what to  this  effect:  'The  reason  is 
that  the  comedy  of  Scaramouch 
merely  ridicules  heaven  and  religion, 
about  which  these  gentlemen  care  no- 
thing ;  but  Moliere's  comedy  ridicules 
the  zealots  themselves,  and  that  they 
cannot  endure.' 

One  of  the  principal  attacks  upon 
Moliere  was  made  by  a  doctor  in 
theology,  Pierre  Roules,  cure  of  Saint- 
Barthelemy.  It  was  a  volume  de- 
voted to  fulsome  panegyric  of  the 
King,  and  bearing  the  title  Le  Roi 
glorieux  au  monde  ou  Louis  XIV  le 
plus  glorieux  de  tous  les  rois  du  monde. 
The  brief  extract  given  by  Moland 

-+  121  +- 


MOLlkRE 

illustrates  the  type  of  flattery  which 
sycophants  could  give  and  monarchs 
could  stomach  two  hundred  and  forty 
years  since.  Some  of  the  expressions 
used  are  positively  blasphemous.  The 
cure  says  that  if  ever  a  king  had  glory 
on  this  earth  and  if  ever  the  earth  had 
a  glorious  king,  '  without  flattery,' 
Louis  is  the  man.  God  never  leaves 
any  work  imperfect  or  half  finished. 
He  makes  no  sketches  or  crayons, 
only  chefs  d'ceuvres.  And  among  his 
masterpieces  Louis  XIV  is  one  of  the 
most  notable.  In  plain  terms,  accord- 
ing to  Pierre  Roules,  Louis  is  '  a  ter- 
restrial god  and  a  divine  man,  without 
a  precedent  and  without  a  peer.' 

We  do  not  know  how  great  a  sense 
of  humor  the  cure  of  Saint-Barthelemy 
had,  but  he  could  not  have  had  much, 

■H-  122  +- 


MOLIERE 

if  he  thought  Tartuffe  was  impious 
and  his  own  panegyric  was  not. 

While  the  ostensible  motive  of 
Roules's  book  was  praise  of  the  mon- 
arch, the  real  motive  was  abuse  of 
Moliere.  The  priest  speaks  in  no  un- 
certain terms,  whether  he  utters  praise 
or  blame.  He  describes  Moliere  as 
'a  demon  clad  in  flesh  and  dressed 
as  a  man,  the  most  outrageous  blas- 
phemer and  atheist  that  ever  lived,' 
one  who  should  be  punished  at  the 
stake  as  a  preliminary  to  the  inevita- 
ble fires  of  hell.  It  would  seem  as  if 
such  violence  might  defeat  its  own 
end.  According  to  Larroumet,  the 
King  gave  Roules  to  understand  that 
his  zeal  was  without  discretion. 

The  poet  remitted  no  effort  to 
have  the  interdiction  raised.    The  ex- 

-+123+- 


*?9\  — fJCUfr  ^V 

MOLlkRE 

periment  was  tried  of  changing  the 
title  of  the  play,  softening  the  expres- 
sions which  gave  most  offence,  and 
costuming  the  chief  character  in  a 
way  less  likely  to  reflect  upon  those 
who,  from  religious  scruples,  affected 
austerity  in  dress.  The  interdict  lasted 
five  years;  not  until  1669  was  Tartuffe 
given  the  freedom  of  the  public  stage.  J 

Let  us  recall  one  or  two  of  the  strik- 
ing incidents  in  this  celebrated  play. 
Tartuffe  does  not  appear  until  the 
second  scene  of  the  third  act ;  but  not 
a  word  is  spoken  up  to  the  moment 
he  comes  upon  the  stage  that  does 
not  define  his  character  with  utmost 
nicety.  We  can  see  the  insinuating, 
unctuous  hypocrite,  whose  presence  is 
a  menace  to  all  healthy,  reasonable 
delight,  as  it  is  a  menace  to  the  spirit 
-»• 1244- 


MOLlkRE 


of  true  devotion.  Tartuffe  has  won 
the  heart  of  the  master  of  the  house, 
and  thereby  seems  to  have  won  all; 
for  the  phrase  'head  of  the  house' 
was  not  an  idle  and  meaningless  one 
in  those  days ;  if  Orgon  wills  that  his 
daughter  shall  break  her  troth  with 
Valere  and  marry  Tartuffe,  there 
seems  to  be  no  help  for  it.  That 
Mariane  is  unwilling  only  makes  mat- 
ters worse.  The  exalted  passion  which 
Orgon  has  conceived  for  the  character 
of  Tartuffe  is  intensified  by  the  hostil- 
ity of  the  rest  of  the  family.  Orgon, 
we  must  remember,  is  defending  not 
his  guest  alone,  or  the  cause  of  reli- 
gion; he  is  also  working  against  that 
invidious  spirit  of  rebellion  which 
would  subvert  his  authority. 

One  cannot  sufficiently  admire  the 
-»- 125-1- 


MOLI&RE 

skill  of  the  great  dramatist  in  placing 
TartufFe's  entrance  with  his  famous 
4  serrez  ma  haire  avec  ma  discipline ' 
so  close  to  the  scene  with  Elmire. 
Tartuffe  takes  advantage  of  the  hospi- 
tality he  enjoys  to  make  love  to  Or- 
gon's  young  and  pretty  wife.  Damis, 
Orgon's  son,  overhears  the  loathsome 
proposals  and  tells  his  father  in  Tar- 
tufFe's presence  of  the  dishonor  that 
has  been  done  him.  But  the  father  is 
so  besotted  with  the  hypocrite  that  he 
will  not  credit  the  story.  The  more 
Damis  protests,  the  more  is  Orgon 
strengthened  in  the  conviction  that  a 
shameful  plot  is  on  foot  to  blast  the 
reputation  of  a  good  man —  doubly 
shameful  because  his  own  son  is  chief 
among  the  conspirators.  The  testi- 
mony of  Elmire  does  not  move  him ; 
-+ 126  •«- 


MOLIERE 

she  is  mistaken,  no  doubt;  she  has 
not  heard  aright ;  the  virtuous  are  so 
apt  to  be  misunderstood.  In  short, 
Tartuffe  is  a  saint.  How  can  one  be 
with  him  and  not  know  it  %  His  mere 
presence  irradiates  virtue.  After  all, 
it  is  a  trick  on  the  part  of  Dam  is  to 
humiliate  Tartuffe. 

A  man  infatuated  to  this  degree 
becomes  unnatural.  Orgon  disinherits 
his  son  and  makes  over  his  property 
to  Tartuffe.  He  even  abases  himself 
in  the  hypocrite's  presence,  falling  on 
his  knees  before  him,  almost  worship- 
ping the  man  whom  he  conceives  to 
be  incarnate  goodness.  When  Elmire, 
making  one  supreme  effort  to  persuade 
her  husband  of  Tartuffe's  treachery, 
asks  him  what  he  would  say,  could  he 
hear  the  damnable  words  with  his  own 

-H  127  ^ 


r^  rttm  ti 

MOLlkRE 

ears,  Orgon  replies  that  he  would  say 
—  nothing,  for  the  thing  is  an  impos- 
sibility. 

Though  slow  to  be  convinced,  Or- 
gon is  convinced  at  last.  Having  sent 
for  Tartuffe,  Elmire  conceals  her  hus- 
band beneath  the  table  and  compels 
him  to  learn  from  the  hypocrite's  own 
lips  the  extent  of  his  depravity.  En- 
trapped, as  he  is,  TarturTe  can  do  no 
better  than  show  himself  a  downright 
villain  and  bring  a  charge  of  treason 
against  the  friend  who  has  lifted  him 
from  poverty  and  overwhelmed  him 
with  benefits.  But  the  great  prince  who 
can  read  all  hearts  is  not  misled  by 
the  baseness  of  a  hypocrite.  TarturTe 
is  carried  to  prison,  and  the  house  of 
Orgon  is  once  more  at  peace. 

Objection  is  frequently  made  that 
-i- 128-1- 


^g\  mum  ^w 

MOLlkRE 

the  denouement  of  Tartuffe  is  weak 
and  conventional.  But  it  has  long  since 
become  a  commonplace  of  criticism 
that  Moliere  is  often  conventional  and 
never  altogether  happy  in  his  denoue- 
ments. 

While  waiting  for  the  removal  of 
the  interdict  Moliere  produced  eight 
plays,  of  which  the  most  notable  were 
Don  Juan  ou  le  Festin  de  Pierre  and 
le  Misanthrope.  The  Festin  de  Pierre 
was  a  bold  advertisement  to  Moliere's 
enemies  that  he  had  no  thought  of 
abandoning  his  position.  It  was  a  fresh 
challenge  to  the  hostile  party  to  do 
their  worst. 

The  classic  Spanish  play  of  Don 
Juan,  from  which  all  the  others  de- 
rive, was  the  work  of  Tirso  de  Molina. 
The  legend  passed  into  Italy  and 
-+ 129-1- 


MOLlkRE 

France.  At  least  two  versions  were 
played  in  Paris  in  Moliere's  time. 
The  romantic  and  supernatural  ele- 
ments of  the  legend  had  always  fasci- 
nated the  popular  imagination.  The 
story  is  briefly  this.  Don  Juan,  the 
embodiment  of  exultant  atheism  and 
sensuality,  kills  the  aged  commander 
d'Ulloa,  whose  daughter  he  had  made 
one  of  the  many  victims  of  his  passion. 
He  escapes  the  vengeance  of  the  law 
by  reason  of  his  birth  and  influential 
connections.  He  then  disappears.  The 
story  is  presently  bruited  abroad  that 
Don  Juan  went  to  the  tomb  of  his  vic- 
tim and  there  defied  and  insulted  the 
statue  of  the  commander.  Whereupon 
the  statue  came  to  life  and  hurled  the 
impious  wretch  into  the  flames  of  Hell, 
which,  greedy  for  their  prey,  burst 
-••130^ 


MOLlkRE 

through   the  yawning  stones  of  the 
chapel  pavement. 

The  libertine  of  the  Spanish  legend 
becomes  in  Moliere's  play  a  type  of 
the  modern  French  seigneur,  powerful, 
lawless,  insolent,  a  blasphemer;  but 
magnificent  in  his  audacity  and  wholly 
incapable  of  fear.  The  play  is  the  com- 
plement of  Tartuffe.  In  the  one  piece 
Moliere  lashes  hypocrisy ;  in  the  other 
he  assails  blatant  and  high-handed  vice. 
The  element  of  comedy  is  supplied  by 
Sganarelle,  Don  Juan's  valet.  The  first 
of  Moliere's  attacks  upon  the  medical 
profession  occurs  in  this  play.  Sgana- 
relle, disguised  as  a  physician,  tells  his 
master  how  he  prescribed  for  the  pea- 
sants who  consulted  him ;  and  Don 
Juan  hurls  a  gibe  at  the  doctors,  whose 
art,  he  says,  is  pure  grimace.  The  last 
-+13H- 


MOLI&RE 

scene  of  the  play,  with  its  superb  op- 
portunity for  a  final  struggle  before 
inevitable  defeat,  seems  tame  after  a 
reading  of  the  fifth  act  of  Marlowe's 
Faustus.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  a  Frenchman  might  find  the 
Faustus  bombastic  and  swollen. 

With  P Amour  medecin^  a  comedie- 
ballet  in  three  acts  (1665),  Moliere 
began  in  earnest  his  attacks  upon  the 
medical  profession.  The  little  sketch, 
written  at  the  king's  command,  was 
composed,  put  into  rehearsal,  and  pro- 
duced, within  five  days.  The  chief 
physicians  of  the  court  were  taken  off 
It  was  possible  to  recognize  them  by 
gesture  and  carriage.  One  may  well 
doubt  whether  the  actors  played  the 
parts  in  masks  made  expressly  to  rep- 
resent the  unhappy  doctors. 


MOLIERE 

\On  June  4,  1666,  the  great  play 
entitled  le  Misanthrope  was  presented 
for  the  first  time.  It  is  Moliere's  mas- 
terpiece.)  Boileau's  judgment  upon  its 
merits  has  been  reaffirmed  by  a  multi- 
tude of  exacting  and  delicate  critics. 
Shakespeare  is  not  more  truly  'the 
author  of  Hamlet '  than  is  Moliere  '  the 
author  of  le  Misanthrope'  This  is  that 
greater  comedy,  by  virtue  of  which 
its  author  at  once  takes  his  right- 
ful place  in  the  first  rank  of  literary 
creators. 

The  chief  character  is  a  type  to  be 
found  in  all  ages  and  all  civilizations, 
and  one  of  perennial  interest.  He  is  a 
man  of  the  world  who  despises  the 
world,  though  he  lives  in  it  and  plays 
his  part  amid  its  pomp  and  vanity.  He 
is  a  pessimist,  but  that  most  admirable 


^  /frKtoa  fly 

molijSre 

specimen  of  all  his  despairing  kind,  a 
generous  pessimist.  He  knows  too 
well  that  the  time  is  out  of  joint.  He 
is  not  so  vain  as  to  think  that  he  was 
born  to  set  it  right.  Whatever  his  ob- 
ligation may  or  may  not  be,  it  is  not  for 
him  to  acquiesce  stupidly  in  the  world's 
shams  and  pretences.  He  has,  too,  his 
mission  of  cursing,  and  this  is  a  mis- 
sion not  to  be  underestimated,  least  of 
all  despised.  Happy  the  world  when 
it  finds  itself  abashed' before  the  •  rude 
sincerity  '  of  an  Alceste. 

|  The  Misanthrope,  like  so  many  of 
Moliere's  plays,  is  an  attack  upon 
hypocrisy  —  in  this  case  s  the  petty  * 
hypocrisies  of  the  fashionable  world.'  ) 
When  the  arraignment  of  society  is 
put  into  the  lips  of  one  who,  as  in  the 
case  of  Alceste,  is  a  part  of  the  social 


0*  /5Ktoft  *k 

MOLI&RE 

stratum  he  so  condemns,  the  effect  is 
withering. 

It  has  sometimes  been  remarked 
that  Alceste's  humor  is  too  violent, 
his  rage  needlessly  brutal,  that  his 
hatred  for  mankind  is  *  based  on  a 
whim,  not  on  reason.'  It  is  important 
to  bear  in  mind  that  Alceste  is  pre- 
sented to  us  at  a  highly  critical  mo- 
ment in  his  history.  A  man  like  the 
'Misanthrope*  may  be  imagined  as 
having  once  conformed  more  or  less 
reluctantly  to  the  manners  of  his  time 
and  his  class.  To  be  sure  he  thinks 
those  manners  absurd  and  the  fashion- 
able world  utterly  insincere,  but  he 
makes  no  protest  beyond  a  biting  sar- 
casm now  and  then.  Gradually  the 
monstrous  nature  of  this  artificial  life 
appalls  and  then  embitters  him.   What 


MOLIERE 

was  once  only  folly  now  seems  wick- 
edness; society  is  enmeshed  in  lies. 
Alceste  passes  through  a  sort  of  crisis. 
At  this  juncture  to  keep  silence  were 
to  become  equally  guilty  with  those 
whom  he  condemns.  Moliere  depicts 
his  hero  at  this  moment  of  supreme 
psychological  interest.  Who  knows 
whether  Alceste  may  not  in  time  be- 
come philosophical  ? 

A  play  as  thoughtful  as  the  Misan- 
thrope is  not  likely  to  command  a  wide 
hearing.  People  said  at  the  time  that 
it  was  a  failure ;  by  which,  apparently, 
they  meant  that  it  was  not  received 
with  tempestuous  applause  on  the  part 
of  the  general  public.  It  was  in  no 
sense  a  failure,  though  it  is  plain  to  see 
that  more  people  were  able  to  compre- 
hend the  fun  of  le  Medecin  malgr'e  lui 
-+136^ 


MOLIERE 

than  the  deep  and  passionate  quality 
of  the  Misanthrope. 

Without  being  vulgarly  popular, 
the  story  of  Alceste  and  Celimene  was 
a  marked  triumph.  For  a  performance 
must  surely  be  regarded  in  the  light  of 
a  triumph  which  commands  the  admi- 
ration of  discerning  critics  at  the  same 
time  that  it  holds  the  attention  of  the 
play-going  public.  The  vivid  interest 
of  the  play  itself,  as  a  play,  was  strength- 
ened by  a  usage  which  the  author  of 
The  Reverberator  holds  unspeakably 
vulgar  when  applied  to  fiction.  One, 
at  least,  of  the  dramatis  personam  in  the 
Misanthrope  was  identified  with  a  man 
well  known  in  the  military  and  social 
life  of  the  time.  However  reprehensi- 
ble may  be  the  practice  of  putting 
well-known  living  people  into  fiction 


moli£re 

and  drama,  Moliere  must  be  allowed 
the  privilege  granted  without  protest  to 
all  writers  of  his  time.  The  making 
of  pen-portraits  had  been  one  of  the 
delights  of  fashionable  society  when 
Moliere  was  a  boy.  The  characters  in 
Mademoiselle  de  Scudery's  novels  not 
only  were,  but  were  intended  to  be, 
recognized.  If  people  were  shocked 
by  Bussy-Rabutin's  Histoire  amour euse 
des  Gaules,  it  was  not  because  they 
found  themselves  described  in  its 
pages,  but  because  the  descriptions 
were  unflattering,  or  even  outrageously 
malicious.  La  Bruyere  in  his  Char- 
acters, published  twenty-two  years 
after  the  epoch  of  the  Misanthrope, 
painted  from  life  and  made  no  con- 
cealment of  the  fact.  In  short,  the 
practice  was  a  common  one.  In  this 
-+138-4- 


MOLlkRE 

respect  Moliere  was  not  an  innovator ; 
he  made  use  of  a  method  that  was 
frequently  employed,  and,  so  far  as  we 
know,  not  frowned  upon.  The  public, 
sitting  for  its  portrait,  only  asked  what 
it  insists  upon  at  the  present  time, 
namely,  that  the  portrait  painter  or 
photographer  do  his  best:  in  other 
words,  show  Nature  what  she  might 
have  done  if  she  had  had  her  wits 
about  her. 

Tradition  has  always  declared  that  ^ 
the  Due  de  Montausier  was  the  ori- 
ginal of  Alceste.  Few  traditions  are 
better  grounded.  The  likeness  was 
remarked  when  the  play  was  first  pro- 
duced. Some  charitable  individuals 
hastened  to  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet 
to  tell  Montausier  that  Moliere  had 
caricatured  him.  After  seeing  the 
-+139-1- 


MOLIERE 

play,  the  nobleman  thought  otherwise. 
Montausier  had  as  few  failings,  taking 
into  account  the  weakness  of  human 
nature,  as  the  best  of  men  may  pre- 
sume to  have.  He  was  not  suscep- 
tible to  vulgar  flattery,  but  he  would 
have  been  of  an  austere  mould  indeed, 
had  he  shown  himself  incapable  of 
being  pleased  at  his  identification  with 
Alceste. 

Montausier  was  a  conspicuous  and 
wholly  attractive  figure  in  the  '  great 
world '  of  his  day.  It  will  be  remem- 
bered that  he  married  Julie  d'An- 
gennes,  eldest  daughter  of  the  Marquis 
de  Rambouillet.  He  was  governor  to 
Louis  XIV  during  the  young  king's 
minority.  He  was  a  patron  of  all  good 
people  and  of  all  noble  enterprises, 
whether  in  statecraft  or  literature. 
-+  140  +- 


M0L1ERE 

Through  his  instrumentality  the  fa- 
mous Delphine  edition  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  classics  was  projected  and 
made.  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery  de- 
scribed Montausier  in  the  Grand  Cyrus, 
under  the  name  of  Megabate.  Accord- 
ing to  her  analysis  he  was  ■  a  born 
enemy  to  flattery/  Had  the  continu- 
ance of  his  fame  depended  upon  the 
novelist's  shallow  but  not  ungraceful 
characterization,  he  would  be  forgot- 
ten ;  as  Alceste  he  lives  and  must  con- 
tinue to  live  so  long  as  the  work  of 
Moliere  shall  endure. 


141 


*5\  /3fc 


OLIERE  was  not  a  hand- 
some man,  though  fulsome  panegyric 
has  tried  to  make  him  out  an  Apollo. 
Of  the  many  so-called  '  portraits  '  only 
two,  according  to  Emile  Perrin,  are 
worthy  of  serious  attention.  The 
poet  was  below  medium  height  rather 
than  above  it.  His  figure  was  thick- 
set and  heavy,  the  legs  long  and  thin. 
His  head  was  large,  the  neck  short, 
the  nose  and  mouth  of  a  type  which 
careful  people  describe  as  '  generous/ 
-+H3*- 


MOLIERE 

In  many  a  face  the  lack  of  physical 
charm  is  fully  compensated  for  by  the 
beauty  of  the  eyes;  but  Moliere's 
eyes  were  small  and  set  wide  apart. 
There  was  need  of  that  ■  inner  flame/ 
that  undoubted  genius,  to  give  to  his 
features  the  power  of  fascination 
which  they  certainly  possessed. 

For  one  whose  art  was  so  largely 
compounded  of  declamation,  gesture, 
and  grimace,  Moliere  was  strangely 
silent  and  dignified  in  private  life. 
His  friends  used  to  rally  him  on  his 
self-absorption.  He  has  put  a  descrip- 
tion of  himself  into  the  lips  of  Elise 
in  the  Critique  de  r£cole  des  femmes. 
filise  describes  the  supper  which  Cli- 
mene  gave  in  Moliere's  honor :  how 
the  guests  stared  at  the  great  actor- 
dramatist  with  round  eyes,  and  ex- 
h-144-i- 


moliMre 


pected  him  to  say  something  extraor- 
dinary every  time  he  opened  his 
mouth.  But  he  only  astonished  them 
by  saying  nothing. 

He  could  talk  well,  but  he  seemed 
to  prefer  being  silent.  He  was  a 
dreamer.  He  listened,  watched,  pon- 
dered what  he  saw  and  heard.  Boi- 
leau  called  him  '  le  contemplateur/ 

To  many  people  such  a  man  seems 
uncanny.  They  fear  his  thought  the 
more  for  being  unspoken.  There  is 
an  often  quoted  passage  in  Donneau 
de  Vise's  play  of  Zelinde  which  brings 
out  this  idea.  The  merchant  of  the 
play  describes  Moliere  leaning  up 
against  the  counter  of  the  shop  in  the 
attitude  of  one  who  dreams.  •  His 
eyes  were  fastened  upon  two  or  three 
people  of  quality  who  were  cheapen- 

-H-I45H- 


MOLlkRE 

ing  laces.  He  appeared  attentive  to 
their  talk  ;  and  it  seemed,  by  the  look 
in  his  eyes,  as  if  he  would  gaze  into 
the  depths  of  their  souls  in  order  to 
learn  the  things  they  did  not  utter. 
I  believe  he  had  a  writing  tablet  and 
that  he  put  down,  under  cover  of  his 
cloak,  anything  they  said  worth  re- 
membering. "  Perhaps,"  remarked  a 
bystander,  "  it  was  a  crayon,  and  he 
was  sketching  their  grimaces  in  order 
to  reproduce  them  on  the  stage."  • 

He  was  not  entirely  affable,  in  the 
common  and  superficial  meaning  of 
the  word.  He  had  lived  too  ear- 
nestly, worked  too  hard,  suffered  too 
much  to  be  merely  affable.  One 
cannot  imagine  him  as  self-conscious, 
'studious  to  please/  cultivating  the 
ready  smile  and  the  look  of  unctuous 
rf  146-1- 


MOLlkRE 

gladness  which  stamp  the  manners  of 
the  small  social  politician. 

He  was  noted  for  independence  of 
spirit.  The  story  of  how  he  abased 
himself  before  Montausier  rings  false, 
and  one  is  glad  to  believe  that  it  is 
only  a  legend.  The  phrase  'poor 
Moliere'  is  made  up  of  ill-assorted 
words.  Unhappy  this  great  man 
might  be  and  often  was  or  depressed 
or  worried,  —  in  fine,  anything  save 
what  would  be  expressed  by  the  pity- 
ing adjective  'poor/  The  story  in 
question  is  told  on  the  authority  of  a 
note  in  Saint-Simon's  copy  of  Dan- 
geau.  Montausier,  says  the  annotator, 
was  incensed  by  a  gossiping  report 
that  he  had  been  held  up  to  public 
ridicule  as  Alceste  in  the  Misanthrope ; 
and   he   threatened   Moliere    with   a 


MOLIJERE 

caning.  A  threat  of  this  kind  was  not 
wholly  idle.  Granting  that  Mon- 
tausier  could  entertain  so  brutal  an 
impulse,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
there  would  be  many  to  give  him 
their  moral  support  in  the  exercise  of 
his  privilege.  In  the  Seventeenth 
Century  the  right  of  the  aristocracy 
to  beat  the  lower  classes  was  undis- 
puted. The  Earl  of  Rochester's 
'  chivalrous '  conduct  is  a  matter  of 
history.  Being  incensed  at  Dryden, 
the  Earl  hired  two  or  three  ruffians 
to  cudgel  the  poet.  They  are  said  to 
have  earned  their  money.  This  view 
of  the  relation  of  the  aristocracy  to 
people  who  had  the  misfortune  not 
to  be  born  'noble,'  underwent  no 
change  when  a  new  century  came  in. 
A  Chevalier  de  Rohan,  in  1725, 
-+ 148 +- 


MOLIERE 

caned  young  Voltaire  at  the  door  of 
the  Due  de  Sully's  palace ;  the  Duke 
thought  it  very  amusing,  and  shouts 
of  laughter  went  up  when  Voltaire 
challenged  the  Chevalier. 

According  to  Saint-Simon's  note, 
1  poor '  Moliere,  frightened  because  of 
the  great  nobleman's  wrath,  knew  not 
what  to  do.  The  event  turned  out 
fortunately;  the  Duke  was  pleased 
with  the  dramatic  portrait,  and  sent 
for  Moliere  that  he  might  congratu- 
late him.  The  poet  '  thought  he 
would  die,'  and  could  only  be  per- 
suaded by  repeated  assurances  that 
Montausier  cherished  no  ill  will. 
Even  then  he  came  •  trembling.'  The 
great  Duke  publicly  embraced  the 
poor  player  and  thanked  him. 

All    this   sounds   like    the   veriest 


MOLIERE 

rubbish.  Taschereau,  a  biographer 
never  unfavorable  to  anecdotage,  finds 
much  that  is  \  evidently  false  '  in  the 
narrative,  and  thinks  Moliere  is  made 
to  play  a  role  out  of  keeping  with 
the  dignity  of  his  character.  But 
Taschereau,  in  the  laudable  effort  to 
do  one  of  these  eminent  men  justice, 
seems  to  do  the  other  injustice.  He 
hints  that  the  publicity  of  the  saluta- 
tion was  chiefly  due  to  fear  on  Mon- 
tausier's  part,  lest  all  might  not  have 
recognized  in  himself  the  original  of 
Alceste. 

By  virtue  of  his  sincerity  and 
thoughtfulness  Moliere  was  capable 
of  friendship;  and  like  his  fellows 
everywhere  he  doubtless  knew  all 
phases  of  the  regard  continually 
springing  up  among  those  who  meet 
-»•  150-1- 


&\  mtom  /^. 

MOLlkRE 

one  another  in  business,  in  society,  or 
in  the  practice  and  enjoyment  of  the 
arts. 

Moliere's  relations  with  the  Prince 
de  Conde  and  the  Marechal  de  Vi- 
vonne  did  something  to  break  down 
contemporary  prejudice  against  actors. 
Voltaire  likens  the  friendship  of  de 
Vivonne  and  Moliere  to  that  of  Lelius 
and  Terence.  When  Grimarest  pub- 
lished, in  1706,  a  response  to  the  crit- 
icisms in  his  life  of  Moliere,  he  added 
a  paragraph  illustrating  Conde's  atti- 
tude towards  the  poet.  It  is  one  of 
the  few  anecdotes  which  destructive 
criticism  has  not  entirely  set  aside. 
Grimarest  says,  in  substance,  that 
Conde  greatly  enjoyed  Moliere's  soci- 
ety and  used  often  to  send  for  him. 
Fearing  to  disturb  the  poet  in  his 
-*  151  •»- 


MOLIERE 

work  he  resolved  to  send  for  him  no 
more;  but  he  begged  Moliere  to 
choose  his  own  time  and  come  and 
come  whenever  he  had  a  vacant  hour. 
'  I  shall  leave  everything  to  be  with 
you/  said  the  Prince.  Whenever 
Moliere  came  Conde  dismissed  those 
who  were  with  him  and  devoted  him- 
self to  his  guest.  He  was  heard  to 
say  publicly  after  one  of  these  inter- 
views :'I  am  never  wearied  when  I  'm 
with  Moliere.  He  is  a  man  who 
furnishes  everything;  his  knowledge 
and  his  judgment  are  never  at  fault/ 

Conde  and  Moliere  could  meet  as 
man  with  man.  Not  so  the  King  and 
Moliere.  Yet  Louis  accorded  his  sub- 
ject a  measure  of  kindness  almost 
brotherly  at  times.  Admirers  of  the 
poet  have  exaggerated  the  intensity  of 
-f  152-4- 


MOLI&RE 

the  monarch's  regard.  It  is  charming 
to  think  of  Moliere  seated  at  the 
King's  breakfast-table  while  Louis 
carves  the  fowl  and  helps  his  guest 
first,  having  summoned  the  courtiers 
that  they  might  profit  by  this  lesson 
in  manners.  But  the  legend  of  the 
'en-cas  de  nuit'  is  very  properly  de- 
nominated a  legend.  It  is  wholly  dis- 
credited since  Depois  subjected  it  to 
rigorous  analysis.  That  the  legend 
could  have  come  into  existence,  been 
repeated  by  every  biographer,  made 
the  subject  of  picture  and  story,  is  a 
proof  of  popular  confidence  in  the 
greatness  of  the  King's  favor.  Admir- 
ers of  the  dramatist  are  ready  to  be- 
lieve any  tale  illustrative  of  the  mon- 
arch's favor.  Admirers  of  Louis  XIV 
are   equally   positive  that   the  King 


MOLlkRE 

could  have  written  Tartuffe  and  the 
Misanthrope  if  he  had  a  mind  to;  but 
he  generously  stayed  his  hand  and 
gave  Moliere  a  chance. 

Among  the  poet's  intimates  were 
Boileau,  La  Fontaine,  and  Racine. 
The  friends  used  to  meet  two  or  three 
times  a  week  in  Boileau's  apartment. 
Their  talks  were  easy  and  informal, 
without  a  trace  of  the  academic. 
Later  a  misunderstanding  arose  be- 
tween Racine  and  Moliere,  but  no 
outsider  profited  by  it,  and  he  did  ill 
who  attempted  to  recommend  him- 
self to  one  of  these  men  by  deprecia- 
tion of  the  other.  Moliere  praised 
les  Plaideurs  when  not  a  few  were 
bent  upon  condemning  it.  To  an  of- 
ficious person  who  spoke  contemptu- 
ously  of    the    Misanthrope,    Racine 


MOLIERE 

said  :  '  It  is  impossible  for  Moliere  to 
make  a  bad  play.' 

Boileau  was  Moliere's  always  loyal 
partisan.  They  differed  on  minor  crit- 
ical points,  but  the  full  strong  current 
of  their  friendship  encountered  no  ob- 
stacles. Boileau,  who  wrought  with 
pains  and  produced  in  small  quan- 
tity, admired  the  spontaneity  of  Mo- 
liere's productive  power  and  the  pre- 
cision of  his  touch.  Though  younger 
than  his  friend  he  criticised  freely 
and  found  Moliere  always  patient 
and  amiable  under  such  criticism. 
When  Louis  XIV  asked  Boileau  to 
name  the  rarest  of  all  the  great  writers 
of  his  century  the  satirist  replied : 
'Sire,  it  is  Moliere.'  The  King  re- 
sponded that  he  did  not  believe  it, 
and  then  added  with  princely  good 


MOLlkRE 

humor  that  Boileau  ought  to  know 
better  than  he. 

With  the  venerable  Corneille  the 
younger  dramatist  always  maintained 
cordial  relations  in  spite  of  the  efforts 
made  to  embitter  them  against  each 
other.  Moliere  produced  a  number 
of  Corneille's  later  pieces,  and  was 
open-handed  in  his  financial  dealings 
with  the  old  poet. 

Mignard  the  painter  was  Moliere's 
life-long  friend.  To  him  posterity  is 
indebted  for  at  least  one,  and  it  may 
be  two  portraits  of  the  author  of  the 
Misanthrope.  With  Lulli  the  com- 
poser Moliere's  relations  were  less 
cordial,  and  in  time  they  ceased  alto- 
gether. The  musician  profited  by  his 
professional  connection  with  the  dra- 
matist, but  as  his  success  increased  he 
-*  156-*- 


MOLI&RE 

became  forgetful  of  his  ancient  obli- 
gation. Incongruous  as  it  appears 
Moliere  numbered  among  his  friends 
two  physicians,  one  of  whom,  Ro- 
hault,  was  an  intimate.  The  other, 
Armand  de  Mauvillain,  was  sus- 
pected of  having  furnished  Moliere 
with  notes  for  the  last  '  intermede  '  of 
the  Malade  irnaginaire,  in  which  the 
ceremony  of  conferring  the  degree  of 
doctor  of  medicine  is  so  brilliantly 
and  mercilessly  parodied. 

Chapelle,  who  had  been  Moliere's 
companion  in  student  days,  was  a  de- 
voted friend  and  liegeman  in  the 
years  of  the  poet's  triumph.  They 
were  an  oddly  assorted  pair.  Chapelle 
was  a  Bacchanalian  idler  who  looked 
upon  life  as  a  prodigious  jest.  Mo- 
liere drank  only  milk,  toiled   like  a 


MOLI&RE 

galley-slave,  and  was  profoundly  seri- 
ous in  his  mirth.  Chapelle  used  to 
spend  much  of  his  time  at  Moliere's 
little  country-place  at  Auteuil,  then 
an  isolated  village,  far  from  the  noise 
of  the  city.  When  the  poet  was  in- 
disposed Chapelle  would  play  the 
part  of  host.  Auteuil  was  the  scene 
of  that  famous  supper  over  which 
Chapelle  presided,  and  under  whose 
ministrations  the  guests  became  suffi- 
ciently drunk  to  be  able  to  maintain 
the  ancient  thesis  that  the  highest 
happiness  consists  in  not  having  been 
born  at  all,  and  the  next  highest  in 
dying  as  soon  as  possible.  Moliere 
was  in  his  own  room  too  ill  to  join 
the  convivialities.  But  when  one 
came  running  to  tell  him  that  all  his 
guests,  true  to  their  new  philosophy, 
-+  158-*- 


MOLIERE 

had  gone  to  throw  themselves  into 
the  river,  the  poet  forgot  his  illness 
and  ran  after  them.  He  urged  upon 
them  the  necessity  of  waiting  until 
morning  that  they  might  commit  sui- 
cide by  daylight,  bravely,  in  the  face 
of  the  whole  world,  that  the  moral 
effect  of  their  heroic  action  might  not 
be  lost.  The  philosophers  hailed  Mo- 
Here's  proposition  with  enthusiasm, 
and  all  staggered  back  to  the  house. 

Security  in  the  affection  of  his 
friends,  in  the  regard  of  the  philo- 
sophic La  Mothe  Le  Vayer,  in  the 
devotion  of  young  Baron  the  actor, 
in  the  worshipping  fidelity  of  old  La 
Foret  his  servant,  to  mention  widely 
contrasting  instances,  availed  little  to 
lift  the  cloud  which  darkened  Mo- 
liere's  spirits. 


MOLlkRE 

The  poet's  home  life  was  almost 
unqualifiedly  wretched.  He  had  the 
misfortune  to  fall  in  love  with  a  girl 
twenty-two  years  his  junior,  and  the 
want  of  judgment  to  marry  her.  The 
disproportion  in  the  ages  of  the  pair 
and  the  fact  that  his  wife  was  a  co- 
quette, perhaps  a  dangerous  one, 
poisoned  Moliere's  happiness  during 
those  years  when  this  great  man  could 
most  have  appreciated  domestic  quiet. 
But  the  day  when  men  will  univer- 
sally employ  vulgar  prudence  in  the 
selection  of  their  wives  will  be  the 
day  when  the  word  love  has  ceased  to 
have  a  meaning.  Moliere  married 
Armande  Bejart  because  he  was  de- 
sperately enamoured  of  her.  To  say 
that  she  was  completely  unworthy  of 
him  would  be  to  do  her  injustice. 
-+  i6o-«- 


MOLIERE 

She  has  probably  been  abused  out  of 
reason.  To  blame  her  for  her  youth, 
her  power  of  fascinating  all  who  came 
within  her  reach,  her  beauty,  and  her 
willingness  to  let  it  exert  that  potent 
force  by  which  beauty  everywhere 
triumphs,  is  to  blame  her  for  the  pos- 
session of  qualities  which  Moliere 
most  adored  in  her.  His  fortune  was 
none  the  less  pathetic.  He  sought 
for  happiness  and  realized  it  in  a 
measure;  but  in  its  train  came  sus- 
picion and  *  dull-eyed  care/ 

The  history  of  Moliere's  wife  in- 
volves biographical  problems  wholly 
outside  the  scope  of  this  little  book. 
The  scandalous  charge  made  against 
Moliere  by  an  envious  actor,  Mont- 
fleury,  in  a  'requete'  addressed  to 
Louis  XIV,  was  held  of  so  little  mo- 
-H- 161  •»- 


MOLIERE 

ment  that  Louis  himself  stood  god- 
father to  Moliere's  first  born.  The 
calumny  has  been  none  the  less  per- 
sistent because  they  who  best  knew 
the  poet  rejected  it  with  contempt. 
The  discussion  will  be  found  elabo- 
rated, in  some  cases  to  disproportion- 
ate fulness,  in  all  the  standard  bio- 
graphies of  Moliere. 

Armande-Claire-filisabeth-Gresinde 
Bejart  was  the  youngest  daughter  of 
Joseph  Bejart  and  Marie  Herve. 
Little  or  nothing  is  known  of  her 
childhood.  Coming  of  a  family  of 
actors  and  actresses  and  having  nat- 
ural qualifications,  she  was  predesti- 
nated to  a  theatrical  career.  Moliere 
took  the  greatest  pains  with  her  dra- 
matic training,  and,  as  has  happened 
before  and  since,  fell  desperately  in 
-»•  162  +- 


0k  mtim  mmm» 

moliMre 

love  with  his  pupil.  Their  marriage 
was  celebrated  February  20,  1662,  at 
Saint-Germain  l'Auxerrois,  in  the  pre- 
sence of  representatives  of  both  fami- 
lies, Moliere's  father  being  of  the 
number.  The  contract  antedates  the 
religious  ceremony  by  one  month. 

Armande  entered  the  troupe  of  the 
Palais-Royal  that  same  year,  and 
made  her  debut  as  Elise  in  the  Cri- 
tique de  I  'Ecole  des  femmes.  She  played 
the  part  of  Elmire,  the  wife  of  Orgon. 
in  Tartuffe.  In  the  Malade  imaginaire 
her  acting  of  the  lesson  scene  with 
La  Grange  was  thought  to  be  partic- 
ularly happy.  She  was  Angelique  in 
Georges  Dandin,  Henriette  in  les 
Femmes  savantes,  and  Psyche  in  the 
tragi-comedie  of  that  name.  Her  charm 
was   so  great   in  the  role  of  Psyche 


MOLlkRE 

as  to  cause  the  venerable  Corneille  a 
momentary  flutter  of  the  heart.  Made- 
moiselle de  Moliere's  greatest  tri- 
umph was  in  playing  the  part  of  Ce- 
limene  in  the  Misanthrope.  Larrou- 
met  speaks  of  it  as  '  the  most  famous 
of  her  creations/ 

Moliere's  adoration  of  his  wife  was 
so  intense  as  to  be  pitiful.  Their  in- 
compatibility brought  about  long  peri- 
ods of  estrangement  during  which  the 
poet  was  unspeakably  wretched.  He 
freely  confessed  his  weakness  under 
the  spell  that  Armande  cast  over  him. 
One  does  not  need  the  testimony  of 
the  anonymous  author  of  la  Fameuse 
Comedienne  to  be  persuaded  that  Cha- 
pelle  and  Moliere  may  have  had  a 
conversation  not  unlike  the  one  they 
are  reported  to  have  had  in  the  garden 
-+  164  H- 


MOLIERE 

of  the  house  at  Auteuil.  Chapelle  re- 
proved Moliere  for  his  want  of  phi- 
losophy, and  being  asked  whether  he 
had  himself  ever  been  in  love,  re- 
plied :  •  Yes,  in  the  way  in  which  a 
man  of  sense  may  be.'  '  I  see  very 
well,'  said  Moliere,  'that  you  have 
never  loved;  you  have  taken  the  as- 
pect of  love  for  love  itself.' 

Always  a  hard  worker,  Moliere 
found  such  distraction  as  work  can 
give  in  the  varied  and  exhausting  re- 
sponsibilities of  dramatic  author,  man- 
ager, and  principal  comedian  in  his 
own  troupe.  He  was  so  excellent  in 
each  of  these  departments  that  you 
would  say  it  had  been  '  all  in  all  his 
study.' 

He  was  an  incomparable  actor,  '  a 
comedian  from  head  to  foot.'  Few 
-§•1654- 


jm  /reus  rv, 

MOLIERE 

men  have  possessed  in  higher  degree 
the  histrionic  gift.  'By  a  step,  a 
smile,  a  glance  of  the  eye,  a  turn  of 
the  head,  he  expressed  a  multitude  of 
ideas  —  more  than  the  most  energetic 
talker  could  have  given  utterance  to 
in  an  hour.'  He  neglected  none  of 
the  means  which  are  held  legitimate 
in  his  art.  He  understood  the  charm 
of  costume  and  accessories.  Nothing 
could  be  more  vivid  than  Madame 
de  Villedieu's  description  of  this  great 
artist  making  his  entrance  as  Masca- 
rille  in  the  Precieuses  ridicules.  He 
must  have  been  a  fantastic  figure  with 
his  immense  perruque  which  swept 
the  stage  when  he  bowed,  his  exag- 
gerated '  canons,'  and  his  slippers  com- 
pletely covered  with  ribbons.  The 
4  marquis '  was  mounted  upon  heels 
-»•  i66-»-- 


J6\  /ftgfafr  ■  /5j, 

MOLIERE 

so  high  and  slender  that  Madame  de 
Villedieu  professed  her  inability  to 
comprehend  how  they  could  in  any 
way  support  this  vast  bulk  of  silk, 
lace,  and  powder. 

The  emphasis  in  this  description  is 
laid  upon  the  fantastic  and  exagger- 
ated costume  ;  but  there  is  no  lack  of 
testimony  to  show  how  independent 
Moliere's  power  was  of  the  accessories 
of  dress  and  make-up.  He  was  not 
of  that  race  of  comedians  whose  wit 
may  be  chiefly  referred  to  the  skill  of 
the  wig-maker,  the  manufacturer  of 
grease-paint,  and  the  costumer. 

We  associate  Moliere's  name  so 
intimately  with  comic  roles  and  have 
always  uppermost  in  mind  his  tran- 
scendent success  in  these  parts  that  it 
becomes  difficult  to  think  of  him  as  a 
-*  167-1- 


MOLIERE 

tragic  actor.  For  all  that  he  played 
heroic  and  tragic  characters  the  greater 
part  of  his  life  we  are  forbidden  by- 
common  consent  of  the  scholars  to 
think  of  him  as  a  tragedian.  It  is  said 
that  his  passion  for  attempting  such 
roles  was  as  great  as  his  ability  in 
them  was  small.  Not  that  the  work 
lacked  technical  excellence.  If  I  in- 
terpret the  critics  aright  they  accuse 
Moliere  of  failing  to  have  been  born 
a  tragedian;  they  never  say  that  he 
was  not  an  artist.  In  other  words, 
Moliere  could  summon  spirits  from 
the  vasty  deep,  and  while  the  spirits 
would  not  always  come  at  his  bid- 
ding, the  formalities  of  the  incantation 
were  perfect. 

As  an    actor    he    stood   for   natu- 
ralness and  simplicity  of  manner  in 
~ 3*  T68  +-  — ■ — ! 


<&\  aefcun  — ^w 

MOLIERE 

opposition  to^the stilted  and  conven- 
tional school  of  the  art.  He  opposed 
the  violent  type  of  declamation  so 
greatly  in  vogue  in  his  day.  Noise 
was  a  conspicuous  element  in  this  act- 
ing of  the  old  school.  Men  strained 
their  lungs  to  the  point  of  splitting. 
Marvellous  in  his  power  to  tear  a  pas- 
sion to  tatters  was  Mondory,  who  lit- 
erally bellowed  himself  into  apoplexy 
and  died  from  the  violence  of  his  elo- 
cution. Moliere  disliked  the  bombas- 
tic and  vehement  style  of  the  Hotel 
de  Bourgogne.  He  attacked  the 
'Grands  Comediens,'  as  the  cele- 
brated players  of  that  celebrated  thea- 
tre were  called,  and  was  attacked  by 
them  in  turn. 

He  was  no  less  gifted  as  a   drill- 
master  than  as  an  actor.    His  company 
-+ 169  •*- 


MOLlkRE 

of  players  may  be  likened  to  a  per- 
fect instrument  in  the  hands  of  a  skil- 
ful musician.  He  knew  exactly  how 
to  fit  the  people  to  their  parts.  He 
studied  even  their  personal  prejudices, 
making  use  of  those  undercurrents  of 
thought  and  emotion  too  often  neg- 
lected in  the  determination  of  an 
actor's  fitness  for  a  given  role. 

Moliere's  art  was  highly  profitable 
financially.  He  made  a  great  deal  of 
money  and  kept  much  of  it.  Yet  he 
was  free  and  open-handed.  His 
friends  prospered  through  his  prosper- 
ity. When  he  died  his  papers  showed 
to  how  great  an  extent  he  had  helped 
whoever  came  to  him ;  it  was  a  thou- 
sand livres  here,  and  eight  hundred 
livres  there,  and  four  or  five  hundred 
in  some  other  direction. 
-+ 170  +- 


MOLIERE 

He  had  '  an  actor's  passion '  for 
luxurious  surroundings ;  though  why 
should  we  say  'an  actor's  passion' 
when  so  many  men  not  actors  display 
the  same  amiable  weakness  ?  His 
house  in  Rue  Richelieu  was  sumptu- 
ously furnished.  He  lived  'like  a 
lord.'  This  was  thought  to  be  infa- 
mous; people  who  did  not  live  like 
lords,  or  even  like  gentlemen,  hotly 
resented  the  use  Moliere  made  of 
money  that  he  had  earned  himself. 
How  splendid  were  his  surroundings 
did  not  become  generally  known  un- 
til 1863,  when  Soulie  published  the 
remarkable  volume  entitled  Richer- 
ches  sur  Moliere,  with  its  appendix 
containing  among  a  multitude  of  doc- 
uments  the    inventory   of  Moliere's 

h-  171  •*- 


MOLIERE 

effects.  This  inventory  fills  twenty- 
two  printed  octavo  pages. 

He  loved  old  books,  and  was  of 
course  reproached  for  this  innocent 
fancy.  Soulie  has  recovered  the  titles 
in  Moliere's  library  to  about  the  num- 
ber of  three  hundred.  At  the  head 
of  the  list  are  the  two  books  which 
the  poet  inherited  from  his  mother,  the 
folio  Bible  in  two  volumes,  and  the 
Plutarch.  The  list  includes  many  of 
the  classics,  not  a  little  history  and  fic- 
tion, a  number  of  philosophical  trea- 
tises, travels,  and  over  two  hundred 
volumes  of  plays  in  French,  Italian, 
and  Spanish. 

One  might  quote  almost  endlessly 
from  the  documents  which  painstak- 
ing scholarship  has  brought  together 
since  1823,  —  documents  which  throw 
-«•  172  ■«- 


MOLlkRE 

a  flood  of  light  not  alone  on  the  de- 
tails of  Moliere's  history  but  upon 
the  entire  civilization  of  the  times. 
There  is  keen  pleasure  to  be  had  in 
the  dryest  of  these  old  papers.  For 
Englishmen  and  Americans,  however, 
the  pleasure  is  always  qualified  by  the 
regret  that  Fate,  so  lavish  in  revela- 
tions about  Moliere's  life,  should  have 
been  so  strangely  reticent  about 
Shakespeare's. 


J73 


VI 

A  HE  M'edecin  malgr'e  lui  (1666) 
was  a  fresh  setting  of  an  old  theme. 
In  brillancy  and  comic  force  it  is  un- 
surpassed. Beginning  with  Septem- 
ber 3  of  this  year  Moliere  played  the 
Misanthrope  and  the  Medecin  together, 
•  making  his  exit  in  the  court  costume 
of  Alceste  to  return  in  the  garb  of 
Sganarelle.' 

For  the  fetes  at  Saint-Germain 
which  commenced  in  December,  1666, 
Melicerte  (based  on  an  episode  taken 


j^  mum  /^ 

MOLlkRE 

from  Mademoiselle  de  Scudery's  Grand 
Cyrus),  the  Pastorale  comique,  and  the 
Sicilien.  The  first  of  the  three  was 
never  finished;  two  acts  only  were 
given  in  the  Ballet  of  the  Muses.  The 
Sicilien  contains  the  germ  of  the  mod- 
ern opera-comique,  and  is  accounted 
a  perfect  thing  in  its  way. 

In  1668  Amphitryon  was  produced, 
the  piece  which  made  Voltaire  laugh 
so  merrily  when  he  first  read  it  that  he 
fell  off  his  chair  backwards  and  had 
like  to  kill  himself.  Taschereau  mar- 
vels that  this  play,  so  broadly  comic,  so 
gaily  subversive  of  what  are  commonly 
called  the  proprieties,  did  not  in  the 
least  disturb  the  peace  of  mind  of 
those  sensitive  beings  who  had  been 
deeply  offended  by  the  blasphemy  of 
Tartuffe.  One  explanation  is  that  pub- 
-+  176  -1— 


MOLlkRE 

lie  virtue  always  expresses  itself  by  fits 
and  starts.  The  critics  were  a-weary 
of  their  strained  and  unnatural  posi- 
tion, and  welcomed  the  opportunity  to 
be  normal  once  more.  By  an  odd  cir- 
cumstance, their  hour  of  moral  relax- 
ation came  just  when  they  might,  with 
some  reason,  have  knitted  the  brow 
and  pursed  the  lips.  Episodes  of  this 
curious  type  are  constantly  recurring. 
The  publication  of  some  book,  the 
production  of  some  play,  the  exhibi- 
tion of  some  picture,  will  awaken  a 
storm  of  indignation.  Then  close  upon 
the  heels  of  the  supposed  indecency 
comes  a  real  one ;  but  the  public  has 
exhausted  its  energy,  and  this  time 
makes  no  audible  complaint.  It  is  said 
that  Amphitryon  is  not  delicate,  but  it 
is  never  said  that  it  is  not  amusing.  It 


in  Ttrri  iTt. 

MOLlkRE 

was  first  played  at  the  Palais-Royal, 
and  had  twenty-nine  performances. 
The  printed  play  bore  a  dedication  to 
the  Prince  de  Conde,  expressed  in 
terms  not  more  florid  than  the  custom 
of  the  times  required.  This  particular 
dedication  has  a  note  of  sincerity  quite 
unusual  in  pieces  of  this  sort. 

In  July,  1668,  Georges  Dandin  was 
played  before  the  King  and  the  court 
It  was  one  of  the  many  brilliant 
novelties  presented  during  the  fete 
de  Versailles,  that  great  festival  with 
which  France  celebrated  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 
There  is  an  amusing  tradition  relative 
to  this  play.  Some  friend  of  Moliere 
warned  him  that  in  dramatising  the 
story  of  Georges  Dandin  he  was  but 
giving  marked  publicity  to  a  similar 


MOLI&RE 

drama  enacting  itself  right  under  his 
nose;  that  among  the  habitual  fre- 
quenters of  his  theatre,  and  more  en- 
thusiastic than  most  admirers,  was  a 
veritable  Georges  Dandin.  As  a  pre- 
cautionary measure  Moliere  decided  to 
read  the  play  to  the  victim  whom  he 
had  unwittingly  satirized.  The  man 
was  so  flattered  by  the  honor  done  him 
that  he  failed  to  recognize  himself. 
They  say  that  Honore  de  Balzac  took 
malicious  delight  in  reading  to  people 
the  studies  he  had  made  from  them ; 
he  had  unspeakable  joy  in  their  ina- 
bility to  see  themselves  as  Balzac  saw 
them. 

I  On  September  9,  1668,  VAvare  was 
produced.     It  had  but  few  represen- 
tations, and  seemed  to  make  its  way 
slowly  into  the  public  consciousness ; ) 
-1-179-1- 


MOLIERE 

yet  it  was  not  long  before  the  word 
Harpagon  became  generic.  The  play 
was  considered  a  novelty  at  the  time, 
because  it  was  a  five-act  play  in  prose. 
There  had  been  a  few  pieces  of  this 
sort,  but  the  rule  was  that  five-act 
dramas  should  be  composed  in  verse. 
Harpagon  is  not  the  conventional 
miser  of  old-fashioned  plays  and  ro- 
mances, who  creeps  about  with  a  can- 
dle late  o'  nights  to  gloat  over  his  gold, 
and  whom  the  footfall  of  a  passer-by 
throws  into  an  ecstasy  of  terror.  He 
is  more  real  than  one  of  these,  and  at 
once  ridiculous  and  loathsome  because 
so  real.  He  keeps  up  an  establishment, 
has  servants  and  an  equipage,  and  at 
least  goes  through  the  form  of  making 
a  figure  in  the  world.  But  he  is  con- 
stantly retrenching  until  at  last  re- 
-*  i8o-»- 


MOLIERE 

trenchment  has  become  a  mania  with 
him.  His  son  has  a  valet.  Harpagon, 
under  the  pretence  that  the  valet  is  spy- 
ing upon  his  own  financial  operations, 
drives  him  out  of  the  house,  but  first  he 
searches  the  fellow's  pockets.  It  is  a  su- 
pererogatory performance;  the  pockets 
are  empty,  as  are  all  pockets  in  that 
household  except  Harpagon's  own. 
He  keeps  horses,  but  he  starves  them, 
until  they  are  unable  to  drag  them- 
selves about,  let  alone  dragging  a  car- 
riage. Maitre  Jacques,  who  fills  the 
double  role  of  cook  and  coachman  in 
Harpagon's  house,  protests  that  to 
keep  the  beasts  alive  at  all,  he  must 
take  the  food  out  of  his  own  mouth. 
Jacques  is  not  without  courage;  he 
tells  his  master  what  the  neighbors  say 
about  him  ;  for  example,  that  Harpa- 
-+  181  •*- 


MOLI&RE 

gon  has  a  special  almanac  printed  with 
twice  the  usual  number  of  fast-days  so 
as  to  profit  by  the  rigorous  observance 
of  these  days  in  the  servants'  dining- 
room. 

Harpagon  is  a  fool  as  well  as  a 
miser,  and  becomes  the  easy  dupe  of 
an  adventuress  who  persuades  him  that 
a  young  girl  is  in  love  with  him.  The 
older  men  are  the  more  fascinating  to 
this  young  beauty,  so  the  go-between 
reports.  The  girl  actually  broke  off  a 
match  which  was  on  the  eve  of  being 
celebrated  when  she  discovered  that 
the  groom  was  only  fifty-six  and  did 
not  put  on  spectacles  to  sign  the  mar- 
riage contract.  Harpagon  is  overjoyed, 
and  declares  that  if  he  had  been  a  wo- 
man, he  thinks  he  would  have  disliked 
young  men,  too.    He  plans  a  feast  for 


MOLIERE 

this  marvellously  sensible  girl  whose 
ideals  of  manly  charm  are  Nestor  and 
Anchises,  but  is  staggered  at  the  ex- 
pense he  must  undergo.  Valere  agrees 
to  manage  the  affair.  Harpagon  trusts 
him  because  the  youth  has  taught  the 
miser  that  beautiful  sentiment  about 
eating  to  live  instead  of  living  to  eat. 

The  old  miser's  frenzy  over  the  loss 
of  his  gold  is  conventional,  perhaps, 
though  one  must  needs  have  lost  a 
box  of  money  in  order  to  know  ex- 
actly the  feeling,  and  should  be  of 
Latin  blood  in  order  to  comprehend 
the  greatness  of  the  temptation  to  be 
violent  at  such  a  juncture. 

Farcical  as  the  scenes  often  are,  it  is 

possible  to  comprehend  the  state  of 

mind  of  that  Harpagon  of  Paris  who 

liked  to  attend  performances  of  I' A v are 

-+1831- 


MOLlkRE 

because  it  was  a  play  which  taught 
such  excellent  lessons  in  economy. 

The  farce  entitled  Monsieur  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac  was  presented  before  Louis 
XIV  at  Chambord  in  October,  1669. 
Like  a  number  of  Moliere's  pieces  in 
this  style,  the  humor  of  the  situations 
and  liveliness  of  dialogue  are  set  off 
by  a  charming  embroidery  of  music 
and  dancing.  The  poet,  though  his 
health  was  visibly  failing,  and  though 
he  had  every  reason  for  wishing  to  be 
on  good  terms  with  the  medical  pro- 
fession, lashed  the  doctors  unmercifully 
in  Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac.  The  fa- 
mous consultation  scene  is  so  true  to 
life  as  to  give  reason  for  the  belief  that 
the  conferences  on  the  weighty  subject 
of  the  King's  health  were  communi- 
cated to  Moliere  by  some  familiar  at 
-+  184-1- 


MOLIERE 

the  chateau  to  serve  him  for  a  model. 
Nor  is  it  impossible  that  a  hint  might 
have  been  given  by  the  King  himself. 
Louis  once  asked  Moliere  what  rela- 
tion he  and  his  physician  sustained  to 
each  other.  Said  the  poet :  •  We  talk 
together.  He  gives  me  a  prescription 
which  I  do  not  take.  Then  I  get  well.' 
If  Louis  could  suggest  to  Moliere  that 
Soyecourt  would  make  a  diverting 
stage  character,  no  great  stretch  of 
imagination  is  required  to  picture  the 
King  as  giving  his  favorite  comic  poet 
a  hint  of  the  methods  employed  by 
those  'princes  of  contemporary  sci- 
ence,' who  had  the  physical  well-being 
of  majesty  in  their  charge,  methods 
concerning  which  the  King  himself 
may  have  had  moments  of  scepticism. 
The  monarch  not  only  offered  an 
-+  185  -i- 


MOLlkRE 

occasional  hint  as  to  the  characters  of 
the  plays,  he  even  did  Moliere  the 
questionable  honor  to  collaborate  with 
him  in  a  spectacular  piece  —  if  indeed 
that  can  be  called  collaboration,  where 
the  man  of  letters  does  the  work,  and 
the  prince  more  or  less  stands  in  the 
way  of  its  being  rightly  done.  Louis 
gave  the  subject  for  the  Amants  magni- 
fiques,axi&  perhaps  made  suggestions  as 
to  the  conduct  of  the  incidents,  which 
had  of  necessity  to  be  followed.  Such 
a  penalty  must  one  pay  for  the  honor 
of  having  a  king  as  a  literary  coadjutor. 
Whether  due  to  this  cause  or  not,  the 
Amants  magnifiques  is  one  of  the  weak- 
est of  the  few  weak  plays  with  which 
Moliere's  name  is  associated. 

It  was  followed,  in  October  of  the 
same  year  (1670),  by  a  sparkling  com- 
-+186^ 


MOLIERE 

edy-ballet,  the  Bourgeois  gentilhomme. 
Of  the  many  characters  created  by  Mo- 
Here,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any 
one  is  better  known  than  Monsieur 
Jourdain.  He  was  made  to  be  laughed 
at  and  liked.  His  honest  astonishment 
on  finding  that  he  has  been  talking 
prose  all  his  life  without  knowing  it,  is 
one  of  the  few  expressions  from  dra- 
matic literature  with  which  the  world 
is  perfectly  acquainted.  King  Rich- 
ard's proffer  of  his  kingdom  for  a  horse 
is  not  more  familiar. 

Psych'e,  a  spectacular  piece,  written 
by  Corneille,  Moliere,  and  Quinault, 
in  collaboration,  with  music  by  Lulli, 
the  *  swan  of  Florence,'  was  first  given 
at  the  theatre  of  the  Tuileries  in  Jan- 
uary, 1671.  Moliere  was  responsible 
for  the  general  plan  of  the  piece,  and 
-+  187-1- 


MOLlkRE 

for  the  composition  of  these  scenes  and 
passages  where  there  was  opportunity 
for  the  play  of  his  peculiar  wit  and  vi- 
vacity. Comeille,  then  sixty-five  years 
of  age,  displayed  the  tender  passion  of 
his  poetic  youth  in  the  scene  where 
Psyche  tells  Amour  of  her  love.  These 
parts  were  assigned  respectively  to 
Baron  and  to  Armande  Bejart,  Mo 
liere's  wife.  Moliere  himself  played  the 
part  of  a  '  Zephyr,'  which,  considering 
his  age  and  his  figure,  seems  odd  and 
grotesque  enough.  This  fact  has  been 
often  cited  as  a  proof  of  Moliere's  per- 
fect willingness  to  sink  his  own  person- 
ality and  take  a  minor  role  when  there 
was  no  place  for  the  exercise  of  his 
peculiar  quality. 

Les  Fourberies  de  Scapin  and  la  Com- 
tesse  d'Escarbagnas  belong  to  this  same 


MOLlkRE 

year,  1671.  The  first  of  these  is  taken 
in  part  from  Terence ;  it  represents  a 
return  to  the  comedy  of  intrigue,  the 
work  of  Moliere's  youth.  The  Com- 
tesse  d'Escarbagnas  is  a  picture  of  pro- 
vincial manners,  drawn  with  that  shade 
of  malice  which  the  best-natured  Pa- 
risian can  be  depended  upon  to  make 
use  of  when  he  depicts  town  ways. 

Les  Femmes  savantes,  a  five-act  com- 
edy in  verse,  was  produced  at  the  the- 
atre of  the  Palais-Royal,  on  March  1 1, 
^167^.  It  was  intended  in  part  for  a 
satire  on  the  latest  intellectual  craze, 
the  passion  for  science  and  philosophy. 
Moliere  was  of  course  more  or  less  un- 
just, not  because  it  was  any  part  of  his 
nature  to  be,  but  because  satire  in  its 
very  quality  is  unjust.  The  case  must 
be  overstated,  or  half  the  effect  is  lost. 
-♦•  189  -*— 


MOLlkRE 

This  is  altogether  true  in  dramatic  and 
pictorial  satire,  where  exaggeration  is 
the  essence.  No  one  believes  for  a 
minute  that  there  was  any  measure  of 
justice  in  Arbuthnot's  description  of 
Marlborough  as  '  Hocus,  the  old  cun- 
ning lawyer,'  yet  how  much  spirit  and 
energy  would  be  wanting  to  that  in- 
imitable satire  of  Law  is  a  Bottomless 
Pit  had  its  author  dealt  more  leniently 
and  delicately  with  his  victims.  Mo- 
liere  wished  to  show  the  disastrous  ef- 
fect of  pedantry  in  warping  a  woman's 
nature  from  the  course  Heaven  marked 
out  for  her.  Exactly  what  course  this  is, 
seems  to  be  even  yet  a  moot  point.  Not 
every  woman  who  understands  Greek 
is  an  Armand  or  Philaminte.  Do  we 
not  all  know  of  a  famous  woman  of 
the  last  century  who  was  none  the  less 
-»•  190-*- 


MOLIERE 

foolish  and  charming  over  her  dog,  and 
none  the  less  devoted  to  her  husband 
and  her  baby,  because  she  was  able  to 
read  the  Fathers  in  the  original  Greek  ! 
However,  Moliere's  point  of  view  was 
grateful  to  many  people,  and  he  prob- 
ably had  as  much  basis  for  his  conten- 
tion as  have  the  majority  of  satirists. 

The  reigning  sensation  was  the  phi- 
losophy of  Descartes.  A  few  under- 
stood it,  and  more  than  a  few  thought 
they  did,  while  everybody  talked  about 
it.  '  Society '  repeated  the  phrases  of  the 
Discours  de  la  Methode.  Denizens  of 
the  ultra-intellectual  circles  had  Des- 
cartes's  name  continually  upon  their 
lips.  A  typical  woman  of  the  salons 
where  the  new  pedantry  flourished  was 
Mademoiselle  Dupre,  a  niece  of  Des- 
marets  de  Saint-Sorlin.  She  was  be- 
-»•  191  +- 


MOLlRRE 

lieved  to  be  fully  as  clever  as  her 
famous  uncle,  and  altogether  free  from 
his  intellectual  whims.  She  knew  Latin 
and  Greek.  •  At  a  time  when  Descartes 
could  reckon  so  many  disciples  and 
admirers  she  was  thought  to  merit  the 
name  of  la  Cartesienne.'  Somaize  de- 
scribes her  in  the  Bictionnaire  des  Pr'e- 
cieuses  as  one  who  has  made  '  open  pro- 
fession of  the  sciences,  of  letters,  of 
poetry,  of  romance.'  She  was  equipped 
with  a  ready  knowledge  of  those  things 
which  supplied  topics  of  conversation 
among  the  frequenters  of  the  ruelles 
and  salons. 

1  The  play  of  the  Femmes  savant  es  «et 
~©»ly  satirized    an    intellectual  move- 
ment, but  it  was  believed  at  the  time 
that  two   well-known  men,  a   noted 
scholar  and  a  noted  bel-esprit,  were 

-*  I92 +- 


MOLlkRE 

held  up  to  ridicule  in  its  scenes.  Play- 
goers found  this  piquant.  The  public 
is  always  happy  when  it  is  able  to  iden- 
tify characters  of  fiction  with  real  peo- 
ple. The  portraits  labelled  respectively 
Trissotin  and  Vadius  were  not  so 
closely  drawn  as  to  admit  of  no  dis- 
pute over  the  question  who  was  the 
unconscious  model  for  each.  About 
Trissotin  there  was  never  much  doubt ; 
he  was  intended  for  the  Abbe  Cotin. 
Moliere  had  a  reason  for  making  the 
attack,  and  the  allusions  fit  the  case  so 
well  as  to  make  ambiguity  impossible. 
In  the  Femmes  savantes.  Act  III.,  scene 
2,  Trissotin  offers  the  ladies  a  ■  ragout 
of  a  sonnet  -  which  has  had  the  fortune 
to  please  a  certain  princess.  In  the 
opinion  of  its  maker  it  is  a  delicacy 
well  seasoned  with  Attic  salt;  he   is 


MOLlkRE 

convinced  they  will  like  it.  Trissotin 
then  recites  his  4  Sonnet  a  la  princesse 
Uranie  sur  sa  fievre.'  This  little  piece 
is  found  among  the  CEuvres  galantes, 
en  prose  et  en  vers,  which  Cotin  pub- 
lished in  1663.  The  sonnet  was  actu- 
ally inscribed  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Nemours,  ■  sur  sa  fievre  quarte.'  The 
'  Epigramme  sur  un  carrosse,'  which  so 
excites  the  admiration  of  Philaminte, 
is  taken  from  the  same  volume.  These 
two  allusions  alone  were  thought  to 
be  sufficient  to  prove  the  identity  of 
Cotin  a\id  Trissotin. 

Menage  was  less  vulnerable  to  the 
shafts  of  satire  than  Cotin.  He  was  a 
man  of  force  of  character  and  of  learn- 
ing. He  belonged  to  several  literary 
coteries,  but  that  in  itself  is  not  suffi- 
cient to  damn  an  author.  They  only 
-*  194  -«— 


MOLIERE 

are  open  to  an  attack  who  live  in  the 
hot -house  atmosphere  because  they 
have  not  the  stamina  to  get  on  in  the 
open  air.  Menage  was  not  a  man  whose 
powers  could  be  summed  up  in  an 
epigram  or  disposed  of  in  a  caricature. 
He  had  good  sense,  and  he  was  not 
without  good  nature.  The  Abbe  Fabre 
thinks  that  Moliere  was  very  unjust. 
At  all  events,  Menage  refused  to  be 
made  ridiculous.  He  determined  not 
to  recognize  himself  in  Vadius,  and 
he  joined  heartily  in  praise  of  the 
Femmes  savantes.  The  Marquise  de 
Rambouillet  asked  him  if  he  was  go- 
ing to  allow  Moliere  to  make  a  mock 
of  him  in  that  way.  Menage  replied : 
'  Madame,  I  have  seen  the  piece,  and 
it  is  altogether  charming.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible to  find  anything  in  it  to  change 
-1.195^ 


MOLlkRE 

or  to  criticise/  Whereupon  Moliere, 
not  to  be  outdone,  disavowed  any 
intention  of  attacking  the  amiable 
scholar.1 

Cotin  undoubtedly  suffered,  though 
he  made  no  reply.  A  story  once  cir- 
culated to  the  effect  that  among  the 
causes  contributing  to  Cotin's  death 
was  mortification  at  the  ridicule  heaped 
upon  him  in  Moliere's  play.  Cotin  did 
not  die  until  1682,  that  is,  ten  years 
after  the  production  of  the  Femmes  sa- 
vant es — a  fact  which  leads  Taschereau 
to  observe  that  mortification  must  have 
been  for  Cotin,  as  coffee  was  for  Vol- 
taire, a  slow  poison. 
(^  Early  in  February  of  the  next  year, 
1673,     me    Malade    imaginaire   was 

1  Taschereau,  p.  285. 
-*  196  •*- 


MOLIERE 

played  for  the  first  time.  Moliere  was 
now  a  very  sick  man,  but  he  remitted 
neither  his  efforts  for  his  art  nor  his 
sarcastic  attacks  upon  the  medical 
profession.  The  play  was  immediately 
and  completely  successful.)  The  actor- 
author  himself  filled  the  role  of  Argan. 
How  pathetic  and  ironical  it  all  was, 
this  unhappy  and  desperately  ill  man 
playing  the  part  of  the  imaginary  in- 
valid ! 

On  the  day  of  the  fourth  represen- 
tation, he  was  so  much  worse  than 
usual  that  his  friends  besought  him 
not  to  go  upon  the  stage.  He  answered 
in  his  characteristic  way:  'What  would 
you  have  me  do?  Here  are  fifty  poor 
work-people  who  have  only  their  day's 
wages  to  live  upon.  What  will  be- 
come of  them  if  I  do  not  play  ? ' 

-4  197  -1— 


MOLI&RE 

This,  in  the  opinion  of  some  critics, 
was  but  a  pretext ;  Moliere  was  rich 
enough,  they  say,  to  pay  for  the  day  he 
might  have  taken  to  be  ill  in.  Prob- 
ably it  was  a  pretext  in  a  way.  Only 
by  thinking  of  the  people  dependent 
upon  him  could  he  drive  himself  to 
his  task.  Like  all  strong  men,  men 
who  have  dominated  circumstances, 
who  have  raised  themselves  to  places 
of  influence,  Moliere  could  endure  least 
of  all  the  thought  that  the  day  of  his 
effectiveness  might  be  over.  When  a 
man  like  this,  with  a  passion  for  work 
such  as  Moliere  was  possessed  of,  once 
falls  behind,  he  is  lost.  He  knows  it, 
and  therefore  struggles  desperately  to 
keep  up.  He  thinks  to  outface  disease 
and  to  shame  death.  There  are  illus- 
trations of  this  thing  in  the  history  of 
-it  198  -»— 


m  mtomm  ,,^ 

M0L1ERE 

men  of  action.  By  making  a  supreme 
effort,  these  great  souls  have  managed 
to  survive  a  crisis  which  promised  to 
be  fatal.  Moliere's  case,  however,  was 
desperate.  The  effort  was  none  the  less 
courageous  because  misplaced.  Per- 
haps it  was  better  that  this  great  artist 
who,  from  the  time  when  a  little  child 
he  held  his  grandfather's  hand  as  they 
walked  to  the  theatre,  had  known  no 
thought  and  formed  no  ambition  which 
did  not  centre  in  the  mimic  life  of  the 
stage  —  perhaps  it  was  better  that  he 
should  meet  the  stroke  of  death  right 
where  he  had  known  the  most  intense 
joy  of  life. 


199 


VII 


URING  the  mock  ceremony 
of  conferring  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Medicine  in  the  Malade  imaginaire, 
and  at  the  instant  when  he  was  pro- 
nouncing the  word  !  juro,'(^Moliere 
was  taken  with  a  convulsion;!  He 
tried  to  pass  it  off  with  a  laugh,  but 
even  the  spectators  could  see  that  he 
was  very  ilj/  The  performance,  how- 
ever, went  on  without  further  inter- 
ruption. Moliere  was  carried  to  his 
home  in  Rue  Richelieu.  The  vio- 
-H-  201  +- 


MOLlkRE 

lence  of  his  cough  increased  until  it 
brought  on  hemorrhage.  [Believing 
the  end  was  near  he  expressed  a  wish 
to  receive  the  sacraments.  The  great 
need  of  the  dying  man  was  not  suffi- 
cient to  move  the  hearts  of  the  two 
priests  who  were  first  summoned. 
They  repeatedly  refused  to  come, 
though  Jean  Aubry  waited  upon 
them  in  person  to  beg  their  attend- 
ance. More  than  an  hour  and  a  half 
was  consumed  in  this  running  back 
and  forth.  When  finally  a  priest  ar- 
rived, the  third  who  had  been  called, 
it  was  too  late;  Moliere  had  ceased 
to  breathe.) He  died  in  the  arms  of 
two  sisters  of  a  religious  order,  who 
were  at  that  moment  guests  in  his 
house. 

A  wretched  dispute  arose  over  the 

-J-202-t- 


MOLlkRE 

question  of  his  interment.  jThe  cure  of 
Saint-Eustache,  taking  his  stand  upon 
the  law  which  forbade  the  admin- 
istration of  the  viaticum  to  usurers, 
'  concubinaires,'  sorcerers  and /players J 
unless  they  have  confessed  and  given 
satisfaction  for  their  notorious  offenses, 
refused  to  sanction  the  burial  in  con- 
secrated ground.  A  petition  was  at 
once  addressed  to  Harlay  de  Champ- 
vallon,  the  archbishop  of  Paris,  while 
Moliere's  wife  hastened  to  Versailles 
to  throw  herself  at  the  King's  feet, 
and  beg  for  her  husband  what  these 
haughty  churchmen  would  refuse 
him,  the  privilege  of  Christian  burial. 
Mademoiselle  de  Moliere,  as  she  was 
called,  was  a  good  actress,  albeit  not 
uniformly  successful  in  playing  a 
part  on  the  stage  of  real  life.    She  had 


MOLIERE 

the  temerity  to  say  that  if  Moliere 
was  a  criminal  his  crimes  were  such 
as  the  King  himself  had  sanctioned. 
We  may  well  believe  that  bitterness 
and  passion,  rather  than  bravado, 
moved  her  to  this  unfortunate  speech. 
The  King  dismissed  her  with  but 
little  encouragement.  Nevertheless 
he  sent  word  to  the  archbishop  that 
the  affair  must  be  conducted  in  a  way 
to  avoid  noise  and  scandal. 

Consent  was  finally  and  grudg- 
ingly given  to  the  interment  of  Mo 
liere's  remains  at  Saint-Eustache.  The 
funeral  was  to  be  held  by  night, 
1  without  pomp,'  and  it  was  forbidden 
to  carry  the  body  into  the  churchy 
The  act  of  inhumation  on  the  parish 
register  naturally  makes  no  mention 
of  Moliere  the  actor,  only  of  Moliere, 
-*  204-1- 


01m  m&**  bl 

MOLIERE 

'tapissier,  valet  de  chambre  ordinaire 
duRoi., 

Ugly  epithets  have  been  showered 
upon  Harlay  de  Champvallon  because 
of  his  attitude  in  this  matter.  The 
instance  is  one  of  many  illustrating 
how  a  man  may  get  a  bad  name  by 
keeping  strictly  to  the  letter  of  the 
law.  The  ecclesiastic  whose  reputa- 
tion with  posterity  was  most  likely  to 
suffer  by  a  display  of  intolerance  was 
the  one  selected  through  the  irony  of 
fate  to  be  the  official  instrument  of  an 
affront  to  Moliere  dead.  Had  the 
duty  fallen  to  some  rigid  moralist,  a 
man  of  the  life  and  temper  of  Bour- 
daloue  for  example,  there  would  have 
been  nothing  to  say.  But  Harlay  de 
Champvallon  of  all  men !  a  prelate 
who  was  notorious  for  his  gallantries, 
-1-205  **■ 


MOLIERE 

though  he  unquestionably  held  sound 
views  on  the  wickedness  of  playact- 
ing. When  he  died,  in  1695,  it  was 
found  difficult  to  get  any  one  to  pro- 
nounce his  eulogy.  Madame  de  Se- 
vigne  observed  that  there  were  two 
trifles  which  made  the  undertaking  an 
embarrassment  to  the  eulogist:  one 
was  the  archbishop's  life  and  the  other 
was  his  death. 

If  Harlay  has  been  roundly  abused 
he  has  also  been  warmly  defended. 
There  is  no  little  reason  in  Brune- 
tiere's  remarks  that  the  position  of 
those  zealous  partisans  is  singular 
who  insist  that  the  archbishop,  be- 
cause he  failed  in  some  of  his  duties, 
should  have  transgressed  in  all.  '  In  the 
eyes  of  the  public/  says  Brunetiere, 
4  he  at  least  preserved  the  proprieties.' 

-••206-I- 


MOLlkRE 


On  Tuesday,  February  21,  1673, 
at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  the 
funeral  of  Jean-Baptiste  Poquelin  de 
Moliere  took  place. J  The  bier,  cov- 
ered with  the  pall  of  the  guild  of  up- 
holsterers, was  borne  by  four  priests 
and  followed  by  a  great  crowd  of 
mourners.  The  body  was  taken  to 
the  cemetery  of  Saint-Joseph  and 
buried  '  at  the  foot  of  the  cross/  Af- 
ter the  interment  there  was  an  almost 
prodigal  distribution  of  alms  among 
the  poor. 

The  stone  slab  which  Mademoiselle 
de  Moliere  placed  over  her  husband's 
grave  was  in  existence  as  late  as 
1732.  There  is  a  tradition,  in  support 
of  which  some  not  wholly  convincing 
arguments  have  been  made,  that  the 
body  of  the  poet  was  surreptitiously 

-*•  207  •«- 


,&\  m&m  ^ 

MOLI&RE 

removed  from  the  grave  at  the  foot  of 
the  cross,  and  buried  in  a  remote  part 
of  the  ground.  The  tradition  gained 
enough  credit  to  satisfy  the  commis- 
sioners who,  in  1792,  were  authorized 
by  the  government  to  seek  for  Molie- 
re's  remains.  These  gentlemen  made 
their  investigation  in  a  place  where, 
according  to  the  best  authority,  those 
remains  could  not  have  been  found. 
For  which  performance  the  commis- 
sioners have  been  accused  of  •  legerete 
et  inconsequence/  The  relics  ex- 
humed at  that  time,  after  suffering 
some  neglect,  found  a  resting-place 
in  the  garden  of  the  Petits-Augustins, 
in  a  tomb  erected  for  them  by  the 
pious  care  of  Alexandre  Lenoir. 
Here  they  remained  until  1817,  when 
they  were  taken  to  the  cemetery  of 

-J-208-J- 


MOLIERE 

Pere  -  Lachaise.  (Paraphrasing  a  re- 
mark by  an  eminent  scholar,  it  may- 
be said  that  this  mausoleum  in  Pere- 
Lachaise,  albeit  nothing  more  than  a 
cenotaph,  is  at  least  a  reminder  of 
the  attitude  of  France  towards  one 
of  the  literary  reputations  which  she 
holds  dearest.  J 

Moliere's  theatre  remained  closed 
only  a  week.  Three  days  after  the 
funeral  the  Misanthrope  was  an- 
nounced, and  Armande  made  her  ap- 
pearance as  Celimene.  To  any  one 
familiar  with  the  exigencies  of  theatri- 
cal life  her  conduct  needs  no  justifica- 
tion. The  question  did  not  concern 
herself  alone  —  the  existence  of  a  no- 
table dramatic  organization  was  im- 
perilled by  the  death  of  its  great  chief, 
-i-  209  ♦* 


MOLlkRE 

In  1677,  Armande  became  the  wife 
of  Francois  Guerin  d'Estriche,  a  fel- 
low player.  This  second  marriage  is 
accounted  almost  a  crime  by  certain 
devotees  of  Moliere  who  cannot  for 
a  moment  stop  to  realize  that  the 
woman  upon  whom  they  persist- 
ently heap  abuse  was,  after  all,  the 
woman  whom  Moliere  loved.  A  son 
was  born  of  this  second  marriage. 
He  seems  to  have  been  brought  up 
to  honor  the  name  Moliere.  That 
he  was  not  wanting  in  ambition 
would  appear  from  the  fact  that 
he  courageously  attempted  to  finish 
Moliere's  unfinished  pastoral  of  Meli- 
certe. 

Moliere  had  three  children.  His 
two  sons  died  in  infancy.  The  daugh- 
ter, Esprit-Madeleine  Poquelin,  born 

•H-2IO-J- 


MOLlkRE 

in  1665,  survived  her  illustrious  father 
a  full  half  century.  At  the  time  of 
her  mother's  second  marriage  she  was 
placed  in  a  convent  in  the  hope  that 
she  would  choose  to  remain.  But  she 
displayed  such  repugnance  to  conven- 
tual life  that  it  became  necessary  to 
take  her  home.  The  presence  in  the 
house  of  a  growing  daughter  was  a 
constant  source  of  annoyance  to  the 
always  coquettish  Armande.  The 
child  was  a  glaring  advertisement  of 
the  mother's  age.  Esprit-Madeleine 
knew  this  and  had  the  wit  to  com- 
ment upon  it.  Her  father's  old  friend 
Chapelle,  who  for  a  time  had  lost  sight 
of  her,  met  her  one  day  and  in  the 
course  of  the  conversation  asked  how 
old  she  was.  'Fifteen  and  a  half,' 
she  replied,  and  then  added  with  a 

-+2II  -t- 


MOLlkRE 

smile,  4  but  say  nothing  about  it  to 
mamma ! ' 

In  1705,  when  she  was  forty  years 
of  age,  Esprit-Madeleine  became  the 
wife  of  Claude  -  Rachel  de  Monta- 
lant,  a  widower  with  four  children. 
They  who  will  may  credit  the  roman- 
tic story  that  twenty  years  prior  to 
this  date  Montalant  carried  off  Mo- 
liere's  daughter  because  he  could  not 
obtain  her  mother's  consent  to  their 
marriage.  The  authenticity  of  the 
story  is  thought  to  be  extremely 
doubtful.  Cizeron  -  Rival  describes 
Madame  de  Montalant  as  tall,  well- 
shaped,  not  pretty,  but  making  up  for 
her  lack  of  beauty  by  her  wit.  Gri- 
marest,  who  knew  her,  speaks  of  the 
solidity  and  charm  of  her  conversa- 
tion.   She  died,  childless,  in  1723. 

-n  212-1- 


MOLlkRE 

The  history  of  Moliere's  posthu- 
mous fame  offers  no  anomalies.  For 
the  most  part  it  is  a  record  of  nor- 
mal growth  and  always  widening  in- 
fluence. There  are  few  successful  dra- 
matic writers  the  brilliancy  of  whose 
reputation  has  not  at  some  time  been 
darkened  by  partial  or  entire  eclipse. 
But  Moliere  appears  to  have  been 
one  of  the  few.  Some  fluctuations  in 
public  regard  may  be  noted,  but  on 
the  whole  these  fluctuations  are  neither 
pronounced  nor  numerous.  Moliere's 
fame  has  never  been  markedly  dimin- 
ished. He  has  never  been  relegated 
to  the  limbo  of  authors  who  are 
praised  by  the  critics,  and  neglected 
by  everybody  else. 

There  was  a  moment  when  the 
King  became  wearied  of  the  theatre, 
-+2131- 


MOLlkRE 

as  he  did  of  most  pleasures  and  vani- 
ties; but  this  monarch,  for  whom 
much  of  Moliere's  best  work  was  done, 
went  back  in  old  age  with  renewed 
satisfaction  to  the  plays  in  which  he 
had  taken  unbounded  delight  in  the 
days  of  his  youth.  Bossuet  assailed 
Moliere  in  phrases  which  will  always 
be  read,  and  which  once  read  can 
never  be  forgotten.  But  the  terrible 
denunciation  leaves  us  undisturbed  in 
the  conviction  that  the  author  of  Tar- 
tuffe  and  the  Misanthrope  had  a  deep 
moral  purpose  in  his  work.  And  in 
illustration  of  the  liberal  spirit  of  our 
time  it  may  be  noted  that  the  histori- 
ans of  French  literature  who  render 
most  ample  tribute  to  the  splendor 
of  Bossuet's  qualities  never  fail  to 
apologize  for  the  severity  of  the  great 


MOLIERE 

orator's  attack  upon  Moliere.  The 
Eighteenth  Century  has  been  accused 
of  belittling  and  neglecting  the  great- 
est comic  dramatist  of  the  Seven- 
teenth. On  the  other  hand  the  Eight- 
eenth Century  produced  the  first 
formal  biography  of  the  poet,  and  the 
earliest  of  many  noble  annotated  edi- 
tions of  his  works.  The  public,  usu- 
ally so  capricious  in  its  literary  tastes, 
has  never  been  alienated  from  Moliere. 
The  great  master  has  risen  easily  and 
naturally  to  the  rank  of  a  classic.  He 
has  suffered  but  little  from  criticism. 
Admirers  are  almost  in  danger  of  for- 
getting that  it  is  possible  to  pick  flaws 
in  his  art  and  to  question  the  sound- 
ness of  his  ethics.  The  attacks  upon 
Moliere's  literary  workmanship  are 
not  wholly  without  reason.  Never- 
-•-215  •*- 


MOLIERE 


theless  there  is  a  point  beyond  which 
Academic  criticism  cannot  go;  there 
are  reputations  which  it  is  powerless 
to  injure. 

Trust  an  Englishman  to  be  severe 
upon  a  Frenchman  for  want  of  moral 
sense.  Yet  it  was  an  English  critic 
who  said :  f  Of  all  dramatists,  ancient 
and  modern,  Moliere  is  perhaps  that 
one  who  has  borne  most  constantly 
in  mind  the  theory  that  the  stage  is  a 
lay-pulpit  and  that  its  end  is  not 
merely  amusement,  but  the  reforma- 
tion of  manners  by  means  of  amusing 
spectacles/  J 

The  celebrated  scholar  who  ex- 
plains Moliere's  popularity  by  the 
characteristics  of  his  genius  which  are 
summed  up  in  the  word  '  Gaulois,' 
does  not  take  account  of  us  who,  al- 

-H-  2l6-»- 


MOLIERE 

beit  of  other  race  and  different  tradi- 
tions, certainly  love,  and  fancy  that 
we  understand  these  marvellous  plays. 
We,  too,  read  and  enjoy  Moliere. 
We,  too,  feel  his  power,  though  we 
feel  it  in  our  own  way.  Doubtless  we 
miss  something,  perhaps  much,  that  a 
Frenchman  delights  in.  We  may  not 
pretend  to  understand  subtilties  of 
humor  and  expression  only  to  be  per- 
ceived by  a  mind  saturated  from  ear- 
liest childhood  with  the  French  spirit, 
ideas,  language.  These  things  are  a 
Frenchman's  inalienable  possession, 
as  to  us  belong  certain  peculiar  plea- 
sures in  the  reading  of  Shakespeare, 
pleasures  which  neither  Gaul  nor 
Teuton  can  completely  understand. 

Grant,   as   we  must,  that   Moliere 
was  '  Gaulois '  in  his  fashion  of  going 

-*  217  H- 


MOLIERE 

straight  to  old  traditional  sources  of 
wit,  '  Gaulois  ■  in  the  possession  of 
a  temperament  equally  removed  from 
the  romantic  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
heroic  on  the  other,  '  Gaulois '  in  his 
frank  manner,  in  his  willingness  to  use 
the  plain  word  and  the  daring  ges- 
ture; it  is  still  true  that  even  in 
France  a  goodly  measure  of  Moliere's 
popularity  is  due  to  the  possession  of 
qualities  which  appeal  to  universal 
human  nature.  There  is  that  in  Mo 
Here  which  all  men,  irrespective  of 
nation  and  race,  can  admire. 

The  pages  of  a  standard  bibliogra- 
phy, like  Paul  Lacroix's,  afford  a 
striking  if  rude  test  of  the  extent  of 
Moliere's-  influence.  The  section  de- 
voted to  recording  the  versions  in  for- 
eign   tongues   is   most    illuminating. 

~»-2l8-*- 


MOLIERE 

That  these  plays  should  have  been 
translated  into  English  and  German, 
into  Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese, 
into  Polish,  Swedish,  and  Dutch,  oc- 
casions no  surprise.  But  when  we 
find  the  Precieuses  ridicules  in  modern 
Greek,  the  Misanthrope  in  Persian, 
the  M'edecin  malgr'e  lui  in  Armenian, 
and  the  Mariage  ford  in  Turkish,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  readjust  pre- 
conceived ideas  of  the  size  of  Mo- 
liere's  audience.  These  versions  are 
not  made  at  the  mere  whim  of  a 
scholar,  as  was  the  version  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  in  Latin. 

The  staple  of  Moliere's  comedy  is 
not  Gallic ;  it  is  the  staple  of  every- 
day life.  He  depicts  characters  that 
are  typical  of  what  may  be  found 
everywhere,  the  world  over.  He 
-*■  219  -»- 


MOLI&RE 


lashes  affectation  and  vanity  in  all 
forms:  the  vanity  of  men  who  pre- 
tend to  learning  they  do  not  possess : 
the  vanity  of  men  who  aspire  to  shine 
in  society  for  which  they  are  wholly 
unfitted:  the  vanity  of  men  whose 
only  claim  to  distinction  is  in  the  ex- 
tent and  variety  of  their  diseases,  and 
who  are  flattered  by  doctors  and  apo- 
thecaries as  monarchs  are  flattered  by 
courtiers.  Moliere  shows  us  country 
girls  infatuated  with  the  reigning  lit- 
erary craze,  who  try  to  talk  the  lan- 
guage of  the  critics,  struggle  to  be 
wise  in  madrigals  and  sonnets,  and  at 
the  same  time  keep  perfectly  informed 
on  the  important  questions  of  washes 
and  cosmetics.  He  shows  us  two 
pedants  quarrelling  over  their  respec- 
tive attainments,  and  thus  emphasizes 

-+220  +- 


MOLIERE 

anew  the  fact  that  learning  does  not 
imply  culture,  and  that  ability  to  read 
the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  will  not 
insure  a  man  against  boorishness. 

Moliere  disturbs  us  in  our  belief 
that  politeness  is  a  virtue.  Is  there 
not  too  much  of  bowing  and  compli- 
menting, too  much  of  pretentious  so- 
licitude about  one  another's  health? 
May  it  not  be  accounted  to  us  for 
sin  that  we  smile  hypocritically  when 
we  meet  ?  Is  it  not  better,  since  we 
detest  cordially,  to  let  our  detestation 
be  known  ?  But  again  Moliere  makes 
it  as  clear  as  daylight  that  he  who 
speaks  the  truth  without  respect  of 
persons  or  circumstances  not  only  of- 
fends by  a  rough  honesty,  but  also 
runs  the  risk  of  undoing  the  effect  of 
his  good  deeds.    And   if  this  plain- 

-H-  221  •«- 


MOLIERE 

speaker  allows  his  mind  to  dwell  on 
the  sum  total  of  social  hypocrisy  he 
is  in  a  fair  way  to  become  a  misan- 
thrope and  a  cynic.  And  in  the  de- 
gree in  which  he  expresses  his  con- 
tempt for  mankind  he  furnishes  new 
occasions  for  laughter  on  the  part  of 
those  who  believe  that  virtue  is  never 
so  unattractive  as  when  it  is  militant. 

Moliere  laughs  at  a  dull  conserva- 
tism which  shuts  its  eyes  to  scientific 
progress ;  which  believes  that  an  idea 
is  good  because  it  is  old,  which  would 
rather  be  wrong  with  the  past  than 
right  with  the  present;  which  sup- 
poses that  truth  is  of  necessity  tradi- 
tional and  that  all  the  wise  men  are 
dead  ages  since. 

If  he  ridicules  the  absurd  preten- 
sions of  professors  of  music  and  dan- 

-+  222 -i- 


MOLIERE 

cing,  who  exalt  their  several  arts  at 
the  expense  of  other  and  more  im- 
portant studies,  he  leaves  room  for 
the  inference  that  professors  of  philo- 
sophy may  be  equally  superfluous. 
Musicians  talk  about  'crotchets,'  but 
philosophers  have  their  crotchets,  as 
well ;  dancing-masters  teach  the  art  of 
cutting  capers,  and  are  perhaps  less 
harmful  than  they  who  teach  the 
questionable  art  of  cutting  capers  with 
the  mind. 

One  marvels,  as  he  reads  Moliere's 
plays,  and  studies  the  narrative  of 
his  life,  that  the  career  of  an  actor- 
dramatist  devoted  to  pleasing  the 
public  should  contain  so  many  ele- 
ments usually  associated  with  the  arts 
of  war  rather  than  the  arts  of  peace. 
Moliere  was  ever  a  fighter.  He  be- 
-+223-1- 


MOLIERE 

longs  to  that  splendid  group  of  hu- 
morists which  includes  men  like  Cer- 
vantes, Fielding,  and  Heine,  men  to 
whom  life  is  something  more  than  a 
spectacle.  And  having  courage  to 
fight  he  was  blest  in  his  enemies, 
whether  they  were  quacks,  hypocrites, 
precieuses,  or  silly  and  malignant 
marquises.  Perhaps  he  suffered  more 
than  we  know  from  the  hostile  atti- 
tude of  '  society.'  Nothing  is  more 
galling  to  a  man  of  genius  than  the 
lofty  pretensions  and  condescending 
airs  of  people  of  rank  and  birth.  So- 
ciety frowned  upon  Moliere  because 
he  was  an  actor.  This  is  inconceiv- 
able to  us.  We  sometimes  forget,  in 
our  more  considerate  day,  how  long 
it  has  taken  the  world  to  get  over 
the  idea  that  actors  must  be  treated  in 
-+  224-1- 


MOLIERE 

accordance  with  the  benevolent  old 
English  law  which  classified  them  as 
4  rogues  and  vagabonds '  and  occasion- 
ally flogged  them  at  the  cart's  tail. 
Moliere,  who  endured  much  for  his 
chosen  profession,  would  have  been 
astonished  to  learn  that  the  day  was 
to  come  in  which  actors  would  be 
accounted  the  spoiled  children  of  so- 
ciety, to  be  petted  and  indulged  with- 
out stint.  As  it  was,  however,  the 
influence  of  a  powerful  King  and  the 
possession  of  transcendent  genius 
were  hardly  able  to  secure  to  this 
great  man  the  measure  of  respect  from 
society  that  was  so  evidently  his  due. 
Because  he  was  an  actor  it  was  im- 
possible for  Moliere  to  be  elected  to 
the  French  Academy ;  it  were  a  waste 
of  words  to  abuse  this  famous  society 
-§•  225-1- 


MOLlkRE 

for  neglecting  to  bestow  upon  the 
dramatist  an  honor  that  was  not  in  its 
power  to  grant.  He  became  a  mem- 
ber by  'posthumous  adoption/  In 
1778  Houdon's  bust  of  Moliere  was 
placed  in  the  hall  where  the  Academy 
held  its  meetings.  The  learned  body 
did  itself  no  little  honor  by  the  in- 
scription engraved  beneath  : 

RIEN    NE    MANQUE    A    SA    GLOIRE, 
IL    MANQUAIT    A    LA    NOTICE. 


226 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 
NOTE 


1  he  indispensable  library  companion  is 
of  course  the  Bibliographie  moli'eresque,  by 
Paul  Lacroix.  (Paris  :  Fontaine,  1875. 
2e  edition.)  c  C'est  un  souvenir  de  Pa- 
bominable  siege  de  Paris,'  says  its  author. 
It  may  be  supplemented  by  the  l  Notice 
bibliographique '  in  the  nth  volume  of 
Despois  and  Mesnard's  edition  of  Moliere. 

In  the  following  note  the  books  and 
essays  on  Moliere  are  divided  into  three 
groups : — 

First  :  Brief  notices  in  the  standard 
manuals  of  French  Literature. 

1.  Nisard  (D-)>  Histoire  de  la  Littera- 
227 


MOLlkRE 

ture  franfaise.     Paris,  Firmin-Didot.      I7e 
edition.     Vol.  iii,  pp.  84-128. 

2.  Godefroy  (Frederic),  Histoire  de  la 
Litter ature  franfaise :  XVII  siecle,  Poetes. 
Paris,  Gaume  et  O,  1879.  2*  edition, 
pp.  177-206. 

3.  Pergameni  (Hermann),  Histoire  ge- 
nerale  de  la  Litterature  franfaise.  Paris, 
Alcan,  1889,  pp.  284-294. 

4.  Faguet  (£mile),  Histoire  de  la  Lit- 
terature franfaise.  Paris,  Plon,  1900. 
Vol.  ii,  pp.  122-122. 

5.  Lanson  (Gustave),  Histoire  de  la  Lit- 
terature franfaise.  Paris,  Hachette,  1898. 
5e  edition,  pp.  502-528. 

6.  Brunetiere  (Ferdinand),  Manuel  de 
ly  Histoire  de  la  Litterature  franfaise.  Paris, 
Delagrave,  1898,  pp.  1 69-1 81. 

7.  Saintsbury  (George),  A  Short  His- 
tory of  French  Literature.    Oxford,  Claren- 

-K2284- 


MOLlkRE 

don   Press,  1897.      5th  edition,  pp.  281- 
287. 

Second  :  Biographies  and  critical  es- 
says. 

1.  Taschereau  (Jules),  Histoire  de  la 
Vie  et  des  Ouvrages  de  Moliere.  Paris, 
Hetzel,  1844.      3e  edition. 

2.  Moland  (Louis),  Vie  de  J.-B.  P. 
Moliere,  Histoire  de  son  Theatre  et  de  sa 
Troupe.  Paris,  Gamier  freres,  1892.  Con- 
sult also  Moliere  et  la  Comedie  italienne,  by 
the  same  author. 

3.  Loiseleur  (Jules),  Les  Points  obscurs 
de    la    Vie    de    Moliere.       Paris,    Liseaux, 

1877. 

4.  Baluffe  (Auguste),  Moliere  inconnu. 
Paris,  Perrin  et  O,  1886. 

5.  Chardon  (Henri),  M.  de  Modernises 
deux  femmes  et  Madeleine   Bejart.      Paris, 

-h229-»- 


MOLlkRE 

Picard,  1886.     Also  la  Troupe  du  Roman 
Comique  d'evoilee,  by  the  same  author. 

6.  Larroumet  (Gustave),  La  Com'edie de 
Moliere,  Yauteur  et  le  milieu.  Paris,  Hachette, 
1887. 

7.  Lang  (Andrew),  Article,  '  Moliere,' 
in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  9th  edition. 

8.  Brunetiere  (F«)>  Etudes  critiques  sur 
FHistoire  de  la  Litter ature  fran$aise.  Paris, 
Hachette,  1896.  In  the  first  series  will 
be  found  the  notable  essay  entitled  '  les 
dernieres  recherches  sur  la  vie  de  Moliere ; ' 
in '  the  fourth  series  a  study  entitled  <  la 
philosophic  de  Moliere.' 

9.  Petit  de  Julleville  (L.),  Histoire  de 
la  Langue  et  de  la  Litt'erature  francaise. 
Paris,  Colin,  1898.  Vol.  v,  chapter  1. 
The  seventy-two  pages  devoted  chiefly  to 
Moliere  are  by  Andre  Le  Breton. 

The  student  who  follows  these  slight 
bibliographical  indications  will  have  no  diffi- 


MOLIERE 

culty  in  getting  track  of  what  he  wants. 
He  would  do  well  to  have  always  at  hand 
le  Theatre  francais  sous  Louis  XIV,  by 
Despois,  and  le  Theatre  francais  avant  la 
p'eriode  classique,  by  Rigal.  There  are  in- 
numerable essays  on  special  points,  such 
as  Reynaud's  les  Medecins  au  temps  de  Mo- 
liere, and  Nivelet's  Moliere  et  Gui  Patin. 
Third  :  Direct  sources. 

i.  Moliere  (J.  B.  P.),  (Euvres  com- 
pletes, edited  by  Louis  Moland.  Paris, 
Gamier  freres,  1863,  in  seven  volumes. 
Consult  also  the  monumental  edition,  by 
Despois  and  Mesnard,  in  the  series  of 
1  Grands  £crivains  de  la  France.' 

2.  Lagrange  (Charles  Varlet),  Registre 
(1658-1685),  c  publie  par  les  soins  de  la 
Comedie-francaise,  Janvier  1876.'  Paris, 
J.  Claye.  The  4  notice  biographique  '  is 
by  Ed.  Thierry. 


MOLlkRE 

3.  Beffara  (L.-F.),  Dissertation  sur 
J.-B.  Poquelin  Moliere.  Paris,  Vente, 
1821. 

4.  Bazin  (A.),  iV<?/«  historiques  sur  la 
Vie  de  Moliere.  2e  edition,  Paris,  Techener, 
1851. 

5.  Soulie  (Eud.),  Recherches  sur  Mo- 
liere et  sur  sa  Famille.  Paris,  Hachette, 
1863.  The  extraordinary  collection  of 
documents  in  this  book,  sixty-five  in  num- 
ber, begins  with  the  marriage  contract  of 
Jean  Poquelin  and  Marie  Cresse,  and  ends 
with  the  inventory  made  after  the  death  of 
Montalant,  September,  1738. 

6.  Grimarest  (Jean-Leonard  le  Gallois, 
sieur  de),  la  Vie  de  M.  de  Moliere.  Paris, 
Le  Febvre,  17 05. 

This  is  the  first  edition.  A  reprint 
under  the  editorial  care  of  A.  P.-Malissis 
was  published  by  Liseux  in  1877.  Grima- 
rest got  many  of  his  anecdotes  from  Mo- 


^5\  >ssteft  ^k 

MOLIERE 

Here's  friend  and  pupil,  the  actor  Baron. 
It  has  been  the  fashion  for  many  years  to 
abuse  the  book.  A  tempered  defence  will 
be  found  in  the  appendix  of  Larroumet's 
Comedie  de  Molie're. 

Of  the  many  defamatory  pamphlets 
written  against  Moliere  and  his  wife,  two 
at  least  must  be  accounted  in  a  way 
1  sources/  One  is  the  Alomire  hypocondre, 
and  the  other  is  la  Fameuse  comedienne ;  both 
can  be  easily  found  in  modern  reprints  with 
notes  and  critical  estimates. 


233 


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